ON SALMON FISHING AND CHILDREN

The Wild Atlantic Salmon

There's a trailer doing the rounds for a film out shortly: 'Salmon Fishing in the Yemen.'  I drifted into a charity shop on Monday and quite by chance saw the book there and bought it.  And then consumed two afternoons sitting in this week's glorious sunshine reading it. A most marvellous book, combining the mysteries of migratory fish with high (and Middle Eastern) politics. 

I recommended the book in turn to a friend who used to be a UNESCO colleague and who is a marine biologist and without quite realising what was happening we had an exchange of emails that could have come straight out of the book (which is full of emails).  He told me that there had been attempts to introduce Atlantic salmon in all sorts of places and that the farming of Atlantic salmon was now established in places such as Patagonia and Chile.  Indeed, he told me, that salmon had been released in a Chilean river and had returned to spawn, though the reproduction, for some reason, had not been successful and the authors of the project had returned to fish farming.  I would have thought (in line with the book) that sport fishing would have brought in more income than commodity salmon fish farming and, moreover, would have been less harmful ecologically.  That must remain a subject for debate. 

Salmon fishing is something that hooks you, if you will excuse the pun and though I last caught a salmon forty-two years ago on the river Conon near Dingwall in the north of Scotland whither my grandfather used to invite me and my sister to fish,  the romance of the noble fish and its capture has never left me.  He, my grandfather, was always a great fisherman and in his spare time became a Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at Edinburgh University.  In one memorable (and just possibly apocryphal) three day period he was summoned to three grand houses where the wife of the laird lay in the throes of childbirth.  All three babies took adequate periods of time to arrive; adequate anyway for him to change into his fishing gear and take himself off to the river (of course there weren't such things as mobile phones in those days) and catch a salmon.  Then he would come back and deliver the baby.  His account at the end of three days thus read: three babies, three salmon, three thousand guineas.

Yes, a thousand guineas was the fee apparently for delivering a baby in those pre-war days.  It seems a very great deal, (maybe £50,000 now?) which is another reason for wondering whether the story - like all fishermen's tales - may have been 'stretched' - a little.   Nor do I know the identity of any of the babies, though I do know that he delivered Magnus Magnusson.

Magnus (who will forever be identified with the upmarket Quiz Show 'Mastermind') once found himself in the spotlighted Black Chair, facing questions himself.  He was asked, he once recounted, quite a simple question: 'What was the name of Marilyn Monroe's first husband?'  But although he knew the surname was 'Miller' - the first name that intruded into his thoughts was 'Douglas,' rather than the correct 'Arthur.'  Afterwards he said that he had had a total blackout and had found it impossible to think of any Miller but his mother's doctor (my grandfather) who had by this time become a family friend.

One consequence of the fine weather is that children want to play outside and not only outside but with water as well.  Theo, my grandson of three, had invited his little friends - boy of three and girl of five - around to play and watering the garden while supervising adults tried to engage in a sensible pastime of a summer afternoon glass of Vouvray in the shade of an ivy hedge.  I think everyone enjoyed themselves, though the plants seemed to receive precious little water most of which found its way into the children's clothes.  This might bode well for a potential future career as fisherfolk.

As the Vouvray seemed to have gone down well I made some canapés of humous and paté and meanwhile finding the children some interesting activity indoors.   Recently I have been removing from the shelves reels of old labels that had lost most of their stickiness (labels do have a shelf-life).  But these actually make excellent playthings.  While we adults were enjoying the sunshine, the children, gone quiet for a moment, had decided to 'paper' and when we looked again the hallway was a mass of fluorescent yellow labels, that fortunately, having lost their adhesive power, came off easily.

I'd like now to bring this blog to a tidy close by reporting that we all then sat down to a dish of fresh rod caught Atlantic salmon.  But we didn't.  I fear sadly that my grandfather will prove to have been altogether more efficient as a guide in the salmon fishing department than I will ever be to young Theo.  The Atlantic Salmon is under great threat from fishery of the stock on the high seas and from the capture in vast quantities of the sand eels and other minor forms of marine life on which it feeds for processing into fish meal.  When Theo grows up the sight of wild salmon leaping in British rivers may long be a thing of the past.  If you'd like to know more have a look at the Atlantic Salmon Trust    website from where I have taken the photograph at the head of this piece.