Relief in Ballina as fishingseason finally gets going

There was much relief on the banks of the River Moy in Ballina on Sunday last when a local angler finally landed the first salmon of the fishing season after an unusually long wait of 88 days.

Nigel Lackey’s achievement came as a great comfort to anglers in Ireland’s Salmon Capital because Ballina’s emblematic fish was proving elusive throughout the first few months of the season, which commenced on February 1. Peter McHugh from the Ballina Salmon Anglers’ Association said the delay in capturing the year’s first salmon was largely down to the adverse weather conditions in the last few weeks.

“You never really know when the first one will be caught. Last year it was on March 5th but three years ago it was on April 27th, which was only a day earlier than this year,” he said. “We had nine months of rain and the river has been up and down like a yo-yo which has made it difficult but now we’re finally off the mark with two good fish caught on Sunday.”

Later in the day, another local angler, Trevor Tweed, followed suit and caught a 12lb silver salmon and there is optimism that this good trend will continue in the coming weeks as six additional salmon were caught but got away over the weekend in Ballina.

In the Moy Catchment area, fishing activity has only started to pick up throughout April. On Monday, April 8, the first two salmon of the year were reported by anglers from the Knockmore Salmon Anglers’ Association and the East Mayo Anglers’ Association. Throughout that week, four more salmon were landed by anglers from the East Mayo group. The following week, on Friday, April 19, Cloongee Fishery reported its first salmon.

Mr McHugh said it was not only Irish anglers experiencing challenging conditions.

“Everywhere you have salmon fishing is affected. Scotland and Norway have been affected as well. Norway has 93,000 tonnes caught last year and 136,000 tonnes the year before that.”

He said several factors are at play, including climate change and predators living further upstream.

“It has been reported that a hole in the ozone layer is affecting the krill within the rivers and they are found deeper, which means the salmon are deeper in the rivers. They would usually swim up to 3 metres deep.

“The seals are a major problem. They eat three tonnes of fish a year and there are roughly 10 million seals off our coast. That’s a lot of fish.”