A new season begins
T
he Spring Salmon Season is now well underway and we still have cold weather with snow in parts as we go to print, it is too early to confirm the signs of a continued good run of springers from last season as yet. However, we face this season with a lot more hope as we now have in place a new Minister and a new CEO of Inland Fisheries Ireland. I am sure his predecessors will agree that the new person in harness has progressed up through the ranks to become best qualified to date in fisheries management and protections to serve as CEO. Perhaps that is a pressure and an expectation that he can do without, but those of us who have tracked his career will remember his law enforcement and protection
experience. Their jobs are now at the epicentre of change and we are hopeful and give them every encouragement to exert maximum impact on the improvement of our wild Atlantic salmon figures. The measuring stick of success will be reopening of closed rivers, a continuation of last years increased runs for spawning and in the longer term, a much better survival rate coming back from the feeding grounds of the north Atlantic. We look forward to a future annual international NASCO conference where we will see the results of salmonid reports from official scientific body ICES - International Council for the Exploration of the Sea telling us that the graph is changing direction upwards at last. Maybe this is another of our naive
expectations, that two Irishmen at the helm of wild Atlantic salmon management can have such an impact in a short term, but such are the dreams of our angling members that we can only strive with all our NASCO NGO colleagues to realise this vision.
PAST FAILURES BY GOVERNMENT We have in past articles highlighted the many failures by past ministers to stop the decline in our wild Atlantic salmon stocks. We know from unofficial sources that advice was to “control the controllable” and therefore saving the salmon was an impossible goal and many ministers took this advice and did nothing. Even when in 2013 we eventually
Malinmore Rathlin O Birne Lighthouse with winter sun setting on the Mayo Stags of Broadhaven. Irish Country Sports and Country Life Spring/Summer 2021
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