The mask of the merganser

I was invited to spend a weekend fishing on Lough Mask, based in the charming Co Galway village of Clonbur. I jumped at it because, despite a lifetime spent fishing all over the country, I had never fished for the famous wild brown trout of Mask.

On the first morning I clambered eagerly into the bow of a lake boat in Burke’s Harbour with a fly rod in my hand. I drank in the spectacular scenery as the boat motored out of the harbour and I spotted a large bird swimming low in the water in front of us. In the morning light it was just a dark silhouette, you couldn’t make out colours, and I assumed it was a cormorant. But as the boat got nearer it took to the air, flying very rapidly and showing flashes of white on the wings. It was no cormorant, it was a merganser.

It was an auspicious start to the day, to spot a beautiful bird that is rather rare and declining in numbers. It’s full name is the red-breasted merganser, one of the more stupid bird names as neither the male nor the female has a red breast.

They are members of a small family called the saw-billed ducks, a reference to the saw-like serrations on the beak, the nearest thing any bird has to teeth. This is an adaptation to help them catch fish. Most ducks are mainly vegetarian but mergansers live almost exclusively on fish that they pursue and grab under water.

As well as being expert divers and swimmers they are strong, fast fliers. The pilot of a light aircraft once recorded one that kept pace with him at 120kph, the motorway speed limit. They are really a sub-arctic species and Ireland is at the southern edge of their range.

Every winter a few hundred of them utilise their powerful flying abilities and arrive here from places further north, but the numbers are declining and in winter most of them stick to salt water. A few still breed here, mostly on lake islands in the west and north-west, and it was one of these that I spotted on Mask.

The reason they like to nest on islands on large lakes is probably because this provides them with some protection from mink. Their nests are vulnerable to predators and it’s thought that the decline in the numbers of Irish breeding birds is related to the spread of mink into the western counties.

My first visit to Mask went from good to better. I’m hooked on the scenery of the lake and I want to get back as soon as possible.

There’s also the accommodation in the Clonbur Angling Centre, the food, drink, music and hospitality in Burke’s famous pub and the pleasure of being in a west of Ireland beauty spot that hasn’t been spoiled by the tackier aspects of the tourist industry

I even managed to catch, and release, a couple of modest trout.