The End of the Run
July 27, 2000
Inis Bo Finne, County Donegal, Ireland
Salmon fishing aboard the
Canon Shields
The Salmon run is coming to an end
along the Northwest coast of Ireland as it does each summer
and has for thousands
of years. Morris Dan Coll and his two sons, Donal and John,
have been out on the sea for fourteen hours on each fishing
day
since this year’s run began at the beginning of June. Morris
has his boat at the pier, nets aboard. John, thirteen years old,
brings on a box with food and thermos of tea his
mother, Sara, prepared for them. We depart.
|
|
| British Admiralty chart of Inis Bo
Finne. The shoal called the Cloghan is at bottom right.
There are two different islands off the west coast
of Ireland that are called Inisbofin (The Island of
the
White
Cow) with various spellings. The other is in County
Clare. |
We are out of Inis Bo Finne, one of four small islands
at the very northwest corner of Ireland where the Atlantic
meets what Ptolemy named, on the oldest known chart of these
waters,
the Hyperborean Sea- the farthest northern sea. But the salmon
have their own maps. Jimila Ferry, island man, told me that
the salmon come out of the deeps in high latitudes of the
North Atlantic,
Iceland and Greenland, perhaps from under the ice sheets
that then stretch to the northern pole. They reach European
soundings
off the north coast of Ireland, the Hebrides and Orkney Islands,
then turn and travel west and south to the small rivers and
streams along this coast that are their birthplaces and their
destiny.
Their destiny unless Morris and his sons have their way today.
We leave the pier and cross the Cloghan on a rising tide.
The Cloghan is a shoal shouldering out from the southeast
tip of Inis Bo Finne, running to the
mainland. The seas coming strong from the north rise up on the shallowing
water, trip and crash here making the Cloghan impossible
to cross - good days for
a small open boat to hold harbor. Today the waters are calm, the wind is
southerly, and the forecast is for a mild showery day with
southerlies rising to no more
than Force 3. Morris tells me that Force 3 is enough wind to wrinkle the
surface of the sea and hide the nets from the salmon.
The Canon Shields motors east parallel to the mainland shore,
along the Magheraroarty (pronounce this "ma-her-ror-tee", It means 'Roarty's sands'), , Ballyness
Bay, the estuary for the Bavin and Tullaghabegely (another tongue twister, "tul-ah-ha-beg-lee"),
and Glenna Rivers that drain the Derryveagh Mountains. We ride along the long
Falcarragh Strand and past my father’s birthplace at Drumnatinney.
Past the Raith River the beach ends and the first rocks start that lead
up to the
sheer cliffs of Horn Head. Offshore of Horn Head is where Morris plans
to set the net.
The Canon Shields
His boat is twenty-five feet in length, beam seven feet, depth
two feet. It is lapstrake built, larch on sawn oak frames;
each board overlaps the
board
below and is clench nailed to it, and to the oak. Ireland used to have
its own forests, but they are gone mostly. The larch wood comes from Norway.
The
lapstrake design of the boat also came from Norway - the Vikings raided
along this coast more than a twelve hundred years ago in lapstrake longboats
- flexible,
light, buoyant, seaworthy. Trondheim, Norway is a four day sail from here.
The sailing boats that the Inishboffiners used until the advent of engines,
they called a Drontheim skiff. Canon Shields is built along the same lines
but with a flattened stern to carry the weight of engine. It is driven
by a thirty horsepower Bukh diesel engine. Bukh is a Danish motor manufacturer.
On the mainland, England especially, and southern Europe, is the strong
axis
of influence. But come offshore, even just the mile and a half that Inisboffin
is from Ireland, and one notices the strong influence the Atlantic seaward
countries have had and the heritage they left, from Iberian traders to
Viking raiders. The islanders face the sea, their compatriots are other
men of the
sea.
Forward on the boat there is a small wheelhouse, enough shelter
for the helmsman, the compass, the VHF ship’s radio,
and the box of lunch John brought on. Adjacent to the wheelhouse
at starboard is a warp hauler, driven by hydraulic
lines that run down to a pump on the engine. The boat is steered by a rudder,
outboard of the stern, and connected via cable runs to the ship’s
wheel.
Amidships is entirely taken up by the net. It is one thousand
five hundred meters in length. Fifteen sections each one
hundred meters long. It is
a forty-five mesh monofilament net. This means the diagonal through each
square
hole is
45 millimeters in length - 2 inches. Into this hole the salmon swim. From
mouth to belly the salmon’s girth grows larger. The smallest fish
can swim right through; but the salmon Morris hunts - 6 to 16 pounds -
are larger than
the opening on the. They can’t back out; not only because fish don’t
swim in reverse, but because the net catches on their gill covers, holding
them tight. Often fish will flail and fight and further ensnare themselves.
Morris knows that salmon are powerful swimmers though, and some have enough
power to burst their way on through the net. Some salmon caught in the
spawning rivers show the marks of the net on their midsection and in the
fray of their
tail’s fin from its lashing on the nets' threads.
The net is 1500
meters long. From the top of the water where the cork line floats, to
the bottom of the net where the
leaded line rests is about 2
fathoms- 12 feet. A narrow rectangle then twelve feet deep, one metric
mile long, when
extended. This net is folded in the midships of the Canon Shields. Astern
of the net is the engine cover and behind that, the boxes that we hope
to fill
with salmon. A tidy affair, this kit of the nearshore fisherman. Four
of us in a small open boat, open to the seas and wind of thousands
of empty
ocean
miles to our east, north and west, and six hundred foot sheer rock cliffs
to our south and southeast.
 |
| Morris Dan Coll and his son, Donal,
haul the net. Morris' younger son, John, is in the
wheelhouse of the Canon Shields. |
