Physically and legally protecting native Irish fish
Collecting fry from the incubation unit and releasing them into the headwaters of the Owenriff River (tributary of Lough Corrib).
The oldest hatchery in the world (1852) is located on the Owenriff River, a tributary of Lough Corrib in County Galway. It is run by volunteers from Lough Corrib Angling Federation.
This river is part of the Lough Corrib Special Area of Conservation the author has contributed to three cases to the EU Court of Justice in connection with the Irish Government's failure to protect the annex species in this system — freshwater pearl mussel and Atlantic salmon.
Campaigners are trying to get heritage status for this historic facility as part of their efforts ensure both protection and future funding.
Robert Ramsbottom was born in the Lancashire town of Darwen in 1810 and, some years later, he moved a few miles down the road to Clitheroe. Here, he was employed at a print works and, as he was a keen angler, he began making and selling fishing tackle in his spare time. He obviously had a great knowledge of angling equipment and before long started his own business, opening a fishing tackle shop in the town. He tried and tested his products by fishing for Atlantic salmon, sea trout, and brown trout in his local rivers, Ribble and Hodder.
Salmon and sea trout have an anadromous life cycle; they go to sea for feeding and come back to fresh water to spawn.
Robert became aware of a local man and wealthy cotton manufacturer, Thomas Garnett of Clitheroe, who, during the 1830s, had tried artificial breeding of minnow. In 1841, Garnett turned his attention to salmon and produced and stocked an artificial lake on the land of Francis Fawkes of Farnley Hall, Yorkshire, with salmon fry. It is recorded that these grew to a good size and provided excellent sport to visiting anglers.
Robert’s interest was aroused and from 1848 to 1850, under the supervision of Garnett, he successfully oversaw the hatching of trout and salmon ova for Fawkes for restocking purposes.
The following year, he produced 5,000 salmon ova for Jonathan Peel of Knowlmere on the Lancashire's River Hodder, and also became involved with brothers Edmund and Thomas Ashworth, who had just purchased Galway Fishery in Ireland, consisting of Lough Corrib and its tributaries.
Under British law, this was called a Several Fishery, the title of which dated back to 1283, and gave exclusive rights to the owners.
The Ashworths, who were cotton manufacturers and enjoyed game fishing, paid £5,000 for the title to the fishery and decided to try artificial propagation of salmon for commercial reasons, something which had never been tried before.
Having produced fertilised ova for restocking rivers the previous three years, Robert Ramsbottom now had to find a site to facilitate the netting of broodstock, an incubation unit for fertilised ova and holding ponds to rear the fry to commercially viable fish. The new facility needed a constant flow of fresh river water with natural temperature fluctuations and a filtering system to prevent silting-up. This he found in Oughterard, on the banks of the Owenriff River, a tributary of Lough Corrib — the second largest lake on the island of Ireland.
In December 1852, the Ashworth brothers began operations in the Oughterard Hatchery, County Galway, running the facility as a salmon hatchery under the direction of Robert Ramsbottom of Clitheroe.
This was the start of the world’s first commercially-operated salmon hatchery.
Following a number of years of inactivity at the Hatchery, a public meeting was held in Galway City in June 1898 by anglers who were interested in improving the conditions of Lough Corrib and its tributaries. As a result of this gathering, the Corrib Fisheries Association was formed. Secretary of this new group was Henry Hodgson of Currarevagh, Oughterard, and its objectives were: “The improvement and preservation of the angling on Lough Corrib and the preservation of the spawning beds on the tributary streams thereof.”
The new Association worked in conjunction with the Galway Board of Conservators to run the Hatchery. Between August 1907 and April 1908, resident members of the Association held several meetings in the Anglers Hotel (Hessions), Oughterard, to discuss turning the facility into a trout hatchery.
Having made contact with the Department of Agriculture requesting advice and financial help, the change to trout was completed.
In an entry from the Association’s Annual Report for the 1909 season: “The Association is indebted to the Department of Agriculture for having designed, constructed, and equipped the Hatchery free of all cost, and also for expert advice as to its management.”
A short distance before entering Lough Corrib, the 15km long Owenriff River cascades down the Canrawar waterfall in Oughterard.
Unlike the native salmon and trout, non-native pike (Esox lucius) are unable to jump high rapids; hence, all waters above these falls remained pike-free for thousands of years. Gradients in excess of 6%, which Canrawar is, act as an impassable barrier for these predatory fish moving in from Lough Corrib, where, according to IFI research, they first arrived about 300-400 years ago.
The Owenriff system has seen an unbroken sequence since the end of the Ice Age (approximately 12,000 years) of successful breeding of Atlantic salmon and brown trout, which annually contributes about 15% of Lough Corrib’s resident trout and nearly 10% of its salmon.
The Freshwater Pearl Mussel, which relies on the salmonids to spread their glochidia, is a species with fossils dating back millions of years.
When the Corrib Fisheries Association was formed in 1898, Lough Corrib was infested with non-native northern pike, so their main objective was to reduce predation and increase the production of native trout and salmon.
In Fisheries Board electro-fishing surveys conducted on the Owenriff system in 1997, salmon, brown trout, minnow, stickleback, and eel were the only fish species present; this study found no pike. There is no record of pike being present in this catchment beyond the Canrawar waterfall until 2008 when local anglers alerted fisheries authorities that pike were present in the upper Owenriff system.
Greg Forde, CEO of the Western Regional Fisheries Board, went on national TV and declared that the illegal introduction of pike into these waters “was environmental vandalism". This system includes two Special Areas of Conservation: the Connemara Bog Complex and Lough Corrib/Owenriff.
Anglers expected the State Agencies to act quickly and put a plan in place to eradicate these predatory non-native fish to protect the vital spawning beds of salmon, trout, and freshwater pearl mussel.
Alas, this was not to be, and the IFI’s answer to this problem was to issue anglers authorisations under the Fisheries Act 2010 (exemption from Conservation of Pike Byelaw 809) to fish for pike in the Owenriff system.
We have the bizarre situation in Ireland where, if you want to take more than one non-native fish out of the spawning beds of native fish, you need authorisation from the State. Two of the native species — Atlantic salmon and freshwater pearl mussel — have the highest protection under Irish and EU environmental law.
The Federation continued to campaign for a Salmonid By-law, and in August 2021, Inland Fisheries Ireland (IFI) published a draft proposal 'Designated Salmonid Waters By-law — Submission to Public Consultation'.
They state: “One of the overriding concerns of Inland Fisheries Ireland in the past 15 years was the fact that two by-laws (809 & 806) introduced in 2006 were directly in conflict with the management policy of the then Central and Regional Fisheries Boards. This was intended as a stop-gap measure to address a particular threat, but the anomaly caused by these by-laws in respect of the management and marketing of the Great Western Lakes as wild brown trout fisheries has continued for an inordinate period of time. The proposal to designate these lakes as salmonid (or wild brown trout) lakes must address this inconsistency once and for all.”
- The hatchery featured on on February 20 — see RTÉ Player
- Incubating the Trout (Book Hub Publishing) is available at Kennys Bookshop, Liosban, Galway city, Oughterard Bookshop, and Clifden Bookshop and here.
