We stood on the bridge at Ballylahan to watch the mighty Moy surging by beneath our feet. Brown and turgid, it sucked at the banks and, further down the river, threatened to spill into the low fields from which it had not long retreated. Somewhere in that brown water, we know, swim new-run salmon, heavy-shouldered fish fresh up from the sea.
A few hardy souls will be out looking for them, casting big brass lures into slow, deep pools, where those first spring fish will be holed up. Whatever chance they have of hooking into a genuine spring salmon, they have a much better one of landing a kelt, a spawned fish with little life left in it and flesh too poor for the table.
Most kelts die soon after spawning. Enough survive to create problems for the novice angler, who is certain, or would like to be, that the fish he has landed is a legitimate quarry. But how can he be sure? After all, how nice it would be to have a salmon to show off!
A brief examination of the angler’s prize will yield a few clues. Without exception, a spring salmon will have a healthy silver-blue glow about it. If in the river less than 48 hours, it will almost certainly have sea lice attached to its back or sides. As sea lice cannot survive more than a short time in fresh water, any fish that bears them is certainly fresh….
Mayo News. 19/02/2013. Read the article ‘OUTDOORS Going fishing? Know your fresh salmon from your kelts’
