A week ago, Saturday, October 31st, our young man stood on the narrow bridge in the West, watching the annual ascent up the waterfall of fish and trout, as he has done many times before. No thoughts of traditional Hallowe'en festivities, with all the nuts and apples and even fireworks; little thought, even, for the opening of the season for shooting pheasant and woodcock, but watching for his fish. And before anyone writes in to point out that trout are fish, he insists that in Ireland there is only one fish - salmo salar. All the rest are trout-or-whatever. He was, of course, at Oughterard in Co Galway, and on this occasion a good fall of rain had brought the Owenriff river, which enters Lough Corrib near Oughterard, into flood.
In previous years, a muddy track led to a pleasantly rickety footbridge, situated immediately above the waterfall. Now a signpost, neatly walled lane and new bridge are to be found. So, standing on the bridge, deafened by the roar of the water, you can see the large red-and-black figures of the salmon leaping and skittering across the boiling waters as they attempt to ascend to their spawning streams. But those trout, the beautiful brown trout of the lake, in all sizes, are doing the same. Although not as mighty as the salmon, the whirring tails and sheer persistence are wonderful to behold. To view the phenomenon, proceed almost to the westward end of the village, and, shortly after a guesthouse on the left with a wonderful array of azaleas and rhododendrons, is a signpost indicating the waterfall. Go and see, is his advice, in the season. It is a sight of some majesty, and in the case of the salmon the beginning and end of a journey of thousands of miles.
Henry Williamson wrote his fine book Salar The Salmon more than 60 years ago and it is still in print, though several Dublin bookshops said it would take some days to order it. The book is the story of Salar, the Leaper, coming back to his native stream after years out in the ocean, and the story of the creatures in and around these waters: trout, lamprey, porpoises in the estuary, otters, bats, dragonflies and birdlife including herons and many other species. It is an adventure story, poetically looked at, but the fruit of many years of close observation. The book ends with "the ocean where salmon, moving from deep waters to the shallows of the islands, leap - eager for immortality." Y