One of the great miracles or mysteries of Nature is how the salmon, returning to its native Irish river, after journeying maybe thousands of miles in the Atlantic, can find its way to the very stream from which it emerged from the egg several years before, there to start the whole process over again. How do they find their own river, and then the birth-stream? The smell or taste of the chemical composition of the river at the sea mouth, is one answer, and hard to argue against. But do not the multitudinous essences that go into the river, from farms, from town sewage and so on, not change? Apparently the salmon's homing equipment overcomes all. It did have about three years before making for the sea. Anyway, just now, October into November, they will be nosing their way up to the small side stream of their birth, there to find peace and suitable gravel in which to lay their eggs, which, in February or so, will hatch out to resume the cycle. With Atlantic salmon disappearing so far, any lighthearted approach to poaching the odd salmon for Christmas is now heinous. Endangering the existence of salmo salar, one of God's most beautiful creations. Fisheries officers and members of fishery clubs will be on watch. The fish are especially vulnerable at the close range of a stream such as they choose. Henry Williamson in his book Salar the Salmon describes, poetically yet realistically, the henfish scooping a deep pit in the gravel into which she lays her eggs - about 2,500, Williamson says. The cock fish with her then projects his milt, "millions of invisible organisms", he writes, perhaps hyperbolically, and "some of them found eggs into the skin of which they bored... the rest drifted away to perish".
The Redds, when all is finished, make a considerable mound in a small stream. This process of emigration and return, one book tells us, ranges from the mouth of the Pechora all along the European coast down as far as the rivers of north-western Spain. The Pechora or Pethora lies far along at the eastern end of the Barents Sea, near the Urals. And all along those watercourses there will now be the immigration of fish which left as, maybe, six-inch smolts a few years ago. And yet the numbers fall. As for this country, we still have good rivers and lakes - some; but this is a declining process. Which generation of people on this island will see the end of the wonderful Atlantic salmo salar? Y