New in your supermarket you may find an outlandish sort of fish, the name of which may be strange to you: the char. Once appearing as a novelty, we will soon be coming across it in some continuity, for it is being farmed in several places in this country. Not cheap. Somewhere in the salmon price range. It looks like and tastes like salmon, more or less. Salmo salvelinus appears in Mrs Beeton's famous volume in these words: "This is one of the most delicious of fish, being esteemed by some as superior to the salmon. It is an inhabitant of the deep lakes of mountainous countries. Its flesh is rich and red and full of fat. The largest and best kind is found in the lakes of Westmoreland, and, as it is considered a rarity, it is often potted and preserved."
That was about a century and a half ago. In the recent past there has been an effort to start them breeding in midland lakes. But it is thought by men who know, like Declan Quigley, that they would be unlikely to reach much over a pound in weight. The fish from which you buy a fillet in the supermarket, cosseted in a fish farm, must be about three pounds or more, from the size of the fillets sold. In the meantime, waiting for the promised rain, were the smolts of the wild salmon. An angler on a Meath river stopped casting for trout after hooking three of these brilliant silver little fishes, about as long as your hand, for fear of harming them and stocks to come. Angling stories have a certain sameness about them, and when one starts off by saying that a man brought his fourteen year old son down to the Slaney recently, on his birthday, as a treat, he had in mind to catch a salmon himself, while the boy, with a trout rod and a cast of only five pounds breaking strain, thought he might be lucky and land a brownie.
But there's a Huck Finn turn, in that the boy hooked a salmon on his small rod and frail cast, could hardly believe his luck, and when his father managed, after some time, to get the net around the fish, was taking no chances. He stepped into the water and scooped up salmon and net, and clutching them to his chest, got back to the bank. Seven and a half pounds. He put it into the fridge after having it much photographed, and says he will have it smoked.