James and I leaned, side by side, on centuries-old stonework, watching the telltale ripple playing at the shallow end of the bridge pool; back and across it went; upstream and down, covering ten or twelve square metres of stream bed. Now and then it came to a stop, always at the same place, adjacent to the off-white outline of a broken, sunken branch.
The constant flow of water had long since soaked the bark free from its core of wood and left it pale and luminescent, and in that strange glow I saw them: salmon.
They lay side by side, dressed in dark tartan with lighter hints to jaw and fin. The more we looked the more we saw, until the pool seemed full of fish. The shallow at their tails was deeply scored, showing where at least some of them had spawned. These, heavy in head and slim behind, held station with those yet to fully ripen. These latter patiently wait for their brief moment on the redd, ready to spill their very lives in a torrent of eggs and milt…..
Mayo News 07/01/2014 Read the article ‘A living heritage swims‘
