Mackerel fishing just a perfect catch

MACKEREL galore again this year and our eastern European migrant workers are gobsmacked at the fecundity of the local seas as they reel them in off the pier and off the rocks without even the need of a boat to go after them.

Most evenings I see Polish men employed at a local factory cycling to the sea, fishing rods strapped to their bicycles. At the weekends, their wives or girlfriends keep them company. Whether it is the case that Poles love to fish or that, like Irish emigrants to Britain in the bad old days, they welcome any opportunity to avoid spending their hard earned wages, I am not sure. But there can be few healthier, more productive or more inspiring ways of spending leisure time than standing on the shore in the stillness of the evening casting a line of feathers out over the sea.

With the Irish economy in the horse latitudes and the ship still sinking, private enterprise is the only hope for the citizen to keep his head above water. Kitchen gardening is the new palliative; I am told that those who first learned the meaning of ‘endive’ during the Celtic Tiger years are now growing it in their gardens. They may also, shortly, be growing spuds and personally ‘managing’ their lawns where previously they had a contract gardener ‘come in’ to do it.