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.

Meanwhile, the Poles fish to feed themselves and a reader has written to tell me how he makes a few bob from the bounty of the late-summer seas.

In my August 10 column, I lamented that while stalls selling cooked freshly-caught fish are common in Morocco and the Far East, in Ireland our nanny-state health and safety legislation would probably not allow “an enterprising person to set up a small barbecue on a pier and serve holidays makers a single mackerel with a plastic fork on a paper plate (disposal bin adjacent) at a euro a throw.”

My reader tells me that he found an intriguing way by which, with a bit of work, he can earn some subsistence money from the mackerel.

He says: “I fell in love with Ireland as a young man and some years ago I came to live here and settled down not far from the sea. At first I used to go eel fishing. I had a tiny smoker and one of my favourite dishes was smoked eel. Unfortunately, the eel population has declined dramatically over the last two decades, so I leave them alone now.

“I then started smoking fresh mackerels, caught minutes before from the sea below my house. I purchased a slightly bigger smoking machine, which can take up to 12 fish, depending on their size. I smoked with a sawdust mixture made from beech wood and juniper berries. The smoked fish were meant only for our own consumption or that of our friends.

“Last year, however, I started selling the smoked mackerel at a Farmers’ Market in the nearby town. My stock of a dozen fish always sold out within an hour.

Recently, when delivering wild chanterelle mushrooms to a highly acclaimed restaurant in the town, I mentioned my smoked mackerel. The owner/chef asked me to bring a few in. I went straight home, caught a few fish, fired up the smoker and, that evening, delivered them to the restaurant. That very night, the chef rang me and said he found the fish ‘...outstanding, he never tasted anything like them before’. He asked me to deliver a full tray. We agreed on a price of between one and two euro per fish, depending on size. Since then, I supply smoked mackerels to that restaurant on a regular basis.

“In the meantime the owner of another reputable restaurant ordered from me too. I don’t know whether they serve the fish whole as starters or make paté from them, as we often do ourselves. It is not my business to know.”

As August gives way to September, one can already feel an autumnal stillness in the air. Red admiral butterflies in dramatic array flit over the fuschia, bask on knapweed and thistles or haunt the orchards where a few apples already lie fermenting in the grass.