Irish Fisheries
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REPORT OF THE SPECIAL COMMISSIONERS FOR IRISH FISHERIES, FOR I86 0. Presented to both Houses of Parliament by Command of Her Majesty DUBLIN: PRINTED BY ALEXANDER THOM, 87 & 88, ABB E Y- S T R E E T? for her majesty’s stationery office. 1866. Jrice 7c?.] CONTENTS. Tagc REPORT, ................................................................................................................................ APPENDIX............................................................................. 25 REPO R T. TO HIS EXCELLENCY JOHN BARON WODEHOUSE, LORD LIEUTENANT-GENERAL AND GENERAL GOVERNOR OF IRELAND. May it please your Excellency, We have the honour to present our Third Annual Report on the Salmon Fisheries of Ireland. The different subjects referred to will be found in the following order :— 1. General state of the Fisheries—Improvement—Increase in men employed, and in Funds. Vide post 2. Fixed Engines or Fixed Nets in tidal waters. page 5. 3. Stone Weirs. 7ufep.il. 4. Mouths of Rivers and Estuary Definitions. Ficfep. 12. 5. Local Management. Fufep. 12. 6. Recommendations for Amendment Bill. FVcfep. 18. 7. Fish Passes. Vide p. 20. 8. Pollution. Vide p. 22. 9. Eels. Vide p. 22. 10. Bye-Laws. 7«fep. 22. General State of the Fisheries—Improvement—Increase in men employed, and in Funds. We have great satisfaction in being able to report the steady and progressive improvement of the fisheries committed to our charge. That improvement is, however, more real than apparent. Its proofs are found in the shoals of smolts that descended to the sea last spring, in the multitudes of fry that swarmed in the rivers during the summer, and in the unprecedented number of breeding fish that have so lately thronged the spawning beds. Its effects appear in the increase of the number of men living on the fisheries, and of the funds collected for the purposes of preservation. In no previous year, as far back as living evidence will take us, have the rivers of Ireland been so well stocked with salmon, young and old. But, on the other hand, the supply to the market has been slightly, perhaps, below the average. We publish in the Appendix an abstract of the statements made by the clerks to the Boards of Conservators on the state of the salmon fisheries. By reference to them it will be seen that an improvement is very generally reported. The Cork and Waterford returns are the only exceptions worthy of notice. The description of the management of the Cork district given hereafter nWep. 16. sufficiently accounts for the falling off reported from thence ; indeed we wonder that it is not far greater. The Waterford return is founded almost exclusively on the amount of fish brought into the Waterford fish-house. But since the change in the mode of fishing occasioned by the Act of 1863, a large portion of the take is despatched from other places ; thus we hear from New Ross that £3,050 worth of salmon were bought there last season by newly-established fish factors ; and referring to the railway returns, we find that the quantity of salmon conveyed from Waterford in 1864 was 140 tons 2 cwt., and in 1865 was 131 tons 5 cwt., so that the decline described 3y the clerk as “ such a failure as had seldom or ever been known,” amounts to a decrease of less than nine tons, even assuming that no fish were sent from New Ross vid Ihomastown, the shortest route to Dublin. ° ihe causes of the decrease in the supply, such as it is, arc simple and reassuring. The past season has been exceptionally dry.' The heat and drought of 1865 equalled and indeed surpassed that of 1864, when the rivers fell to a lower level even than in 1826, the year hitherto referred to in Ireland as the driest within memory or known to tradition, brom early spring to late autumn in many rivers there was not a single flood. In the Bann, for instance, a river second only in size to the Shannon, and fed by Lough Neagh, the water fell seven inches lower than in 1864. It is almost needless to say that salmon will not run in dry weather, nor enter rivers that arc below their ordinary low water < REPORT OF THE SPECIAL COMMISSIONERS level. The estuary and sea fisheries also are affected by continuous fine weather. The water becomes clear, the fish are enabled to avoid the draft, drift, or snap nets, and the number taken under such circumstances cannot but be small. The effect of the past unusually long and fine summer has been felt throughout the fisheries of the United Kingdom. The take in Scotland, as in Ireland, has been below the average, and the quick and progressive increase of England has been apparently checked. Some decrease in the supply might, indeed, have been anticipated from the removal since the Act of 1863 came into operation, of the greater number of the fixed engines which filled the mouths and obstructed the entrance of the Irish rivers. Illegal as those engines were the length of time they were suffered to remain shows that they never would have been inter fered with if their power of capture had not been excessive. Working by day and by night, ever ready to intercept the fish, constructed to take advantage in the finest weather of each breeze that ruffled the surface and disturbed the bottom of the sea or estuary, they caught a larger per-centage of the fish than the productive power of the rivers could afford. In dry seasons they were especially injurious, because unusually productive. In times of drought the fish pass up and down the estuaries with the ebb and flow. Coasting along the leeward shore, a certain number are taken in every favourable tide, and when at length the long-desired fresh-water flood fills the rivers, there are few fish left to ascend them. The result has been that where fixed engines have been used in any considerable numbers, a dry season has been followed by a scanty stock of breeding salmon, and an almost entire absence of grilse. Thus the take of one year has been made at the cost of many successive seasons. In Ireland for the last two years this rule has been broken through. Two such seasons of drought as occurred in 1864 and 1865 have not been experienced before within man’s memory, nor can the oldest fisherman recollect the appearance on the spawning beds of a more abundant stock of breeding fish. Thus, though owing to the drought and the removal of illegal fixed engines, the supply for the year has shown a falling off rather than an increase, the prospects of the fisheries were never more promising. An addition, corresponding with the decrease in the capture, has been made to the stock of the rivers, already increasing, and a most opportune check has been given to the over-fishing that was yearly rendering salmon more scarce and more dear. A little patience, with the exercise of such care by the fishery proprietors as ordinary regard for their own interests should ensure, and the Irish fisheries will yield a return that none but the most sanguine now look for. But the promise of an increased supply, and of cheap salmon, is not the only nor indeed the greatest public gain that has been obtained by the operation of the Act of 1863. No country, probably, stands in greater need than Ireland of remunerative and independent labour ; and we have the satisfaction of reporting a large increase in the number of men living on the produce of the public salmon fisheries. In referring in our last Report to the changes brought about by that Act, we stated that our returns showed that 520 more men were employed in the salmon fisheries in 1864 than in 1863. Those returns were based on the calculations adopted by our predecessors, by whom it was estimated that four men were employed by each Bag, or Stake, or Fly-net. We have endeavoured to verify that estimate ; and by a return furnished from the Shannon, we find that whilst 138 of these nets were fished in 1863 in that (the Limerick) District, 207 men only were employed in working them. Four men are not uncommonly required to work a single fixed net, but the same crew are enabled to fish several nets, and hence the mistake has arisen. Assuming the return from the Shannon to be correct, as we believe it to be, and the fixed nets elsewhere to employ men in a like proportion, the gross number engaged in the fisheries in 1863 was 8,830, and in 1864 was 10,384, showing that 1,554 more men were engaged in the salmon fisheries in KuZeAppen- 1864 than in 1863. Our return for 1865 shows a still greater increase. In that ycai dix,page3fl. U}333 men were thus employed, showing an increase on the year 1863 of 2,50u, and we should add that more nets were worked in 1863 than in any previous yc'ar* But the employment given by the movable nets is even greater t uin lei c appears. Stake and Fly nets arc worked from the shore-, Bag-nets by a oa> 01*G generally fishing several nets, and lasting many years ; but each Snap or Unit net (and it is Snap and Drift nets that have taken the place of the fixed nets) is worked by two cots. In the Waterford estuary and Barrow river 282 of those nets weie used in 1863, no less than 467 in 1865, and the demand for cots, we were told, was so great on those rivers in the last spring that the builders could not supply it.