Salmon Fishing: Plenty of changes including myself.

I'll be completely honest.  Much like clay shooting, I don't have the same interest in fishing as I had at a younger age.  I don't have the same hunger for it anymore.  I still enjoy it and go now when I take the notion but I cannot think of spending 10 or 12 hours a day at the river anymore or being dropped off 6 or 7 miles from the house and fishing the river all the way home.  Setting the alarm to be up at 4:30am to make sure I get the first run down the pools in good water. Going to the river with a lunch and a flask so I didn't have to leave the river and maybe miss a fish. Those days are long gone.

In those days, I fished purely for numbers.  I wanted to catch fish every time I went to the river and the longer I spent at the river not catching, the more of a chore fishing became.  Running around with a fly rod and a spinning rod and battering pools, getting nothing, and then rushing to get to the next pool to do it all over again.  Catching a fish and not being content. I had to try to catch two, three or four. Looking back now, there's no way I could have enjoyed that.

My fishing habits have completely changed.  I don't cover the same amount of the river as I once did.  If there are fish outside the walking distance of my house, they're safe enough from me.  The 'Ugly Stik' spinning rod is gathering dust somewhere. I'm not even exactly sure where it is as it's so long since I used it.  I now only fish fly and for far less hours than I have in the past.

Fishing now is almost a part of a habit for me.  When the season has started and we get the first few spates and a few fish start arriving in the pools, I enjoy going to the river a walk after my tea.   I head off to the river around 6pm and am back home by 9:30 at the latest.  I may have only fished a few pools but that walk, bit of casting, maybe turned a fish, maybe hooked and lost it, maybe I've actually landed one for a change, maybe I haven't seen a tail; it really does not matter to me.  I've enjoyed it.

I usually only fish until September where as I used to fish until it got dark on 20th October every year. The last day of our season.  I just don't feel the need to do that anymore.  My 'wee walk after my tea' can't be done anymore.  Even by mid August you can notice a difference in the evenings and the light you used to have at 9 or 9:30pm in July, you have from around 8 by the middle of  August.  It just isn't worth going to the river after my tea from then on.  You can feel the evenings turning slightly colder too.

There are usually still some nice fresh fish entering the river in August and September so if I get the water that I like, I'll try a bit of fishing during the day.  It just doesn't feel the same somehow. I'm outside my comfort zone.

September has changed dramatically on the Faughan in my opinion.  We used to get trout arriving in June,  the start and bulk of the grilse run in July,  slightly bigger Summer salmon came in from the end of July.  August was always a pretty 'dour' month on the river with the earlier run fish starting to stay deeper and not rising to baits quite as easily but then September would arrive.  September was easily my favourite month on the river.  Some people talked about the 'Harvest Run' or the 'Autumn Run'.  Whatever the run was called, they made for the best months of fishing on the river.  Yes, the grilse run could be good but most of the fish were very small with 5lb being a big grilse.  These September fish were much bigger in size.  Probably averaging around 8lb in weight with double figure fish not uncommon at all.

I remember catching two one evening in the early 2000s.  Maybe 2001 or 2002, I just can't quite remember.  I had only arrived at the river and hooked a fish within my first four or five casts.  A beautifully fresh salmon of 8lb with sea lice still attached.  I then got another one within the following two casts and the two fish were like carbon copies of each other.

A couple of Red & Gold Shrimp Variants.  The Irish Shrimp version on the right was my favourite fly for September

This run of fish seemed to keep coming for the next three or four weeks and you still could catch very silver, fresh, fish right up until the last day of the season.

That 'Harvest Run' has all but vanished.  September now is fishing for dribs and drabs of coloured fish that have been laid up in the lower reaches for most of the season.  The odd fresh fish does turn up but this is an exception rather than the rule.  I just cannot get motivated to fish for these coloured fish.

I used to catch coloured fish when I fished in September and October in the past but at this time, these were the exception rather than the rule.  People say to me, "...but you're releasing them again, what difference does it make if they are coloured?"  I really don't know the answer to that but it just feels different and not something I can say I particularly enjoy.

Looking back now, the changes to the river and the runs in particular seem glaringly obvious.  In the early 90s, something strange started to happen.  The grilse were getting smaller.  I remember going to fish for trout with a couple of locals here.  I was only 12 or 13 at the time and these guys were like magicians the way they cast and tugged and manipulated the line to attract trout.  Great to watch.  They had got five or six trout between them and they came home and had them lined up on top of a neighbours wall showing off their catch.  "Wait to you see the size of this one...". Someone then said that it might be salmon.  I remember voices getting raised and the argument got quite intense.  No one had seen a salmon that small before.  This was the start of the 'Sharpening stones'.

1995 was the best season I ever remember on the river.  The grilse run was unbelievable.  Even the counter figure for the river shows this with it being the highest number ever recorded, before and certainly since.

People were catching double figures of grilse per day.  People were recording hundreds caught for the season.  What was most noticable about them though, were their size.  'Sharpening stones'. Long, thin fish that weighed averaging around 3lb in weight.  There were literally thousands of them in the river and there was definitly hay made while the sun shone.

The numbers of fish returning to the Faughan, and indeed the entire Foyle System, declined drastically after 1995.  We were still getting fish but they have not been in the river in such numbers since.  Still these small fish were turing up.  The smallest one I caught personally wasn't much over 1lb in weight.

Looking back now, I can't help but think that 1995 was a warning sign.  A sign that there were problems on the high seas.  Why were the fish so small and skinny?  Simple common sense would suggest that if something is skinny, it hasn't been fed.  Maybe that is a far too simplistic way to look at it but it could be possible. Some people suggested that these fish had not migrated but stayed around the mouth of the Foyle and just came back in with the rest of the grilse as they returned.  There were many theories but no hard facts.

That was over 20 years ago and in the years since that, the fish have seemed to have got slightly shorter in length overall, but much plumper.  We seem to be back to an average weight of grilse in the 4-6lb range but there are far fewer of them.

A nice plump Faughan Grilse

The grilse run now seems to be the only real 'run' of fish we get.  The only time they arrive in numbers.  June/July, a good number of fish arrive and then they come in dribs and drabs after that.  The counter figures published this past few years seemed to indicate more fish entering the river in December than in September and October.  I don't mind that though. 

They say species evolve to ensure their survival.  Perhaps the salmon have evolved to miss the times when their numbers are most at risk? During our fishing seasons.  I doubt that, but there has been changes in our runs and certainly not for the better.