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The 1960’s and 1970’s was a very different world where children enjoyed a much greater freedom than those of the new millennium. Everything now is so structured with parents racing to and fro bringing the children to organised events. When Otter was a mere pup, children organised their own activities using their imaginations and fledgling inventive skills, relatively free to explore their world and expand their horizons.
July was always the best month for mackerel and the hotter the weather it seemed the bigger the shoals that came into Killala bay. Otter was now a seasoned sea angler and those first mackerel a year earlier seemed an eternity ago and Otter was now considered old enough to use a valuable rod. All his fishing to-date was on the eastern side of the bay where they embarked from the pier at Enniscrone.
Before the advent of Carbon Fibre many game fishing tackle shops were quite different than those of to-day. The banter was the same, the stories and the shameless exaggerations were the same but the clientele was mostly drawn from certain levels of society.
Michael took the poker and stabbed at the glowing peat embers in the open fire, teasing them to yield as much heat as they had gathered whilst compressed by the millennia. An open peat fire is the gathering point in many a farmhouse, the focal point around which a family will sit, the high altar over which all important matters were discussed. From womb to grave, the fire would witness all great and minor events of any household. Michael stoked as his father had stoked and soon enough he thought, his youngest son would lord over the embers giving warmth to his own family.
“There’s a softness in the air, a drop of rain this evening Mary.”
Every river has pools with wonderful names. Often called after the family that owned the adjoining land, some after a long dead angler that made the pool their own, and others from the geography of its location. The Wood pool, The junction Pool, Michaels Pool, the list is endless. Every river has a Rock pool, and it was on such a pool that I first met the old man. Close to a wooded area, popular with walkers, it was not a place to enjoy solitude but it held some fine trout and it would challenge the most skilful of anglers. Though for the most part the woods did provide the angler with some sanctuary the regular barking of dogs and conversations of the hidden walkers distracted from the beauty of the place. I only ever seen one other angler fish here, but that was many years earlier than and as far as I could recall he used a small spinning rod which did not interest me, so I never stopped to have a chat. Other older anglers that I had asked about it had simply shrugged their shoulders and declared it unfishable without a boat.