Work this out for yourself. Four men go shooting. They spend about seven hours at it; or 28 man hours, in management speak. They walk nearly all the time. Not a great distance was covered, for it was land that meant each of them was going up and down slopes, through tough, boggy country. Slow, so that, even with deviations, they didn't cover much more than seven miles. Anyway, seven times four men equals 28 miles. The bag at the end of the day: 16 snipe.
Not so bad, if you compare it with the time many anglers spend admiring the river and the scenery around them and go home practically fishless: "But it was a grand day to be out." The French have worked out how many man hours go into catching a fish. In this case, it is the sea trout. The magazine Science et Nature looked at the performance on 27 rivers in the northwest part of their country where, we are told, 81 per cent of the licences for sea trout in France are issued. The year was 1995.
These waters, we are told, abound in sea trout; well exceeding the numbers of salmon. And the authorities have worked out that it takes between 25 and 30 hours to land a sea trout in autumn, and 200 hours in May. And, mark you, one third of all the anglers who had paid for their licence, did not land one fish. That's from the horse's mouth - from the Conseil Superior de la Peche. The council report remarks dryly that the rod men are not over exploiting the stock of fish; netmen take between five and ten times that number.
And it has been calculated that a sea trout caught on rod and line is worth 1,350 francs to the economy. Say £170 approximately at eight to the £, as against 150 francs only for one caught at sea. Say £16. That's official, then. A long time, ago Ken Whitaker worked out the comparative figures for salmon in our economy. As for sea trout, we have lost ground to make up.
Ballynahinch in Galway, for example, where four pounders led the huge schools in the first July floods. Minister Gilmore issued a handsome brochure on TAM 1994-1999 (Tourism Angling Measure) which hopes to see Ireland as Europe's "Angling Mecca". Sea trout is the indicator.