Poaching crackdown now hi-tech

IT’S the season when salmon are heading up rivers to spawn, a time when poachers once engaged in cat and mouse games with gardaí and bailiffs, now known as fishery protection officers.

In those days, poachers went along familiar river banks in darkness, carrying ‘dazzlers’ and using gaffs and spears to kill salmon, a dish then regarded as a winter treat on many a country table. It’s a huge part of rural folklore and probably a throwback to colonial times when people were instinctively ‘agin’ the law.

Bailiffs acting on information or suspicion would also patrol river banks and weirs and would sometimes hide in the bushes for hours in dreadful conditions, waiting to pounce. We rarely hear of this type of carry-on any more.