August 1, 1999

Great Fishing, Minus the Fish

By ALAN COWELL

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Angling at three of Ireland's great country houses lands many pleasures, but few bites. Therein lies the tale.

t was the most slender of volumes -- no more than 51 pages in all -- yet enough to feed the imagination with visions of peat fires and mist-layered mountains, crisp linen and fine wine and, not incongruously, fish.

Just flicking through "Great Fishing Houses of Ireland," a modest booklet available from the Irish Tourist Board, seemed to achieve precisely what some cunning marketing mind intended: a gossamer of wistful fantasy around stately looking places with names like Ballyvolane and Ballynahinch, Mount Juliet and Delphi Lodge, Newport House and Black Water Lodge.

	Michael St. Maur Sheil/Black Star, for The New York Times
	Mikey Conneely, manager of Ballynahinch Castle's fishery, on the Ballynahinch River, with the castle in the background.

But, most of all, the booklet seemed to evoke the possibility of fulfilling several ambitions for someone who had not visited Ireland for decades, never fished for salmon and, most of all, had no Spartan hankering for cold showers and dawn risings.

Of the 21 houses listed, I sought three that met various criteria: comfort without ostentation, fishing on both lough and river, and no need to invest in expensive new gear. I ruled out accommodations on some of Ireland's most renowned salmon rivers, like the Moy and the Blackwater, simply because I wanted smaller rivers that I could fish from the bank using single-handed gear. And I was looking for places within easy striking distance of my chosen landfall in Ireland: the leprechaun-sized airport at Knock in the west, which is reached from Stansted Airport near London in an hour. After much poring over of maps and guides, I chose Newport House, Ballynahinch Castle and Delphi Lodge.

What I hadn't reckoned on in my planning were two irritants. One was utterly minor -- midges -- and one obsessively major. As in parts of Scotland, Norway and elsewhere, commercial salmon farming in the estuaries of western Ireland has in recent years all but wiped out sea trout and salmon runs, a matter not just of deep ecological concern but also of local contention, locking fisheries like Delphi, Ballynahinch and Newport into lawsuits with both the fish farmers and the Government. In a way, it is a classic contest between farmers -- and government -- citing the need for industries in these remote areas, and the concerns of fishery owners over an equally important source of revenue and jobs, touring anglers.

But there was no such ambiguity about accommodations: each of the houses offered variations on the themes I was looking for -- from the wonderful art of Newport to the vast communal dinner table at Delphi, where food and wine flow as smoothly as a tall tale from an angler's tongue.

The early June afternoon was already well advanced by the time I reached Newport House, dominating the estuary of the Newport River in County Mayo in northeastern Ireland. Kieran J. Thompson, the proprietor, is a former oil company executive who had been a regular visitor to the ivy-clad 18th-century manor house, once the seat of a scion of the rebellious O'Donnell clans expelled from Donegal in the 17th century. When it came up for sale in 1985, Mr. Thompson took early retirement, he said, and bought it, finding a home not just for paying guests but also for some of the rugs, prints and furniture he had accumulated during his years in the Middle East.

A large painting of Col. Sir Hugh O'Donnell, who died in 1760, by the Irish portraitist Hugh Douglas-Hamilton dominates the dining room, just one of a series of public rooms that range from an elegant drawing room to a down-to-earth Irish-style bar. The dining room has tables for 40, who can choose from a menu that might include home-smoked salmon, Clew Bay oysters and fresh steamed flounder. The wine list, too, is a product of Mr. Thompson's collecting. Experts assured me later that the prices were relatively reasonable, but I shied from the 1983 Château D'Yquem, at around $300.

But the idea was not just to enjoy good food, fine wine and late-night chatter in the red leather club chairs of the lounge. Mr. Thompson's 34-year-old son, also Kieran, was assigned as my gillie, or guide, for a couple of hours on the Newport River, a short stretch linking Lough Beltra to the sea. There, the challenges became apparent.

There had not been enough rain (when is the weather ever perfect for anglers?) so the river was too low for a good run of grilse, as salmon are called when they return to their home rivers to spawn after their first winter at sea. Coupled with that, Kieran explained, fish farming had decimated runs that once yielded catches of a couple of salmon and 10 sea trout a day. He could remember taking 27 sea trout -- a migratory version of wild brown trout -- in a single day. But, in a story repeated throughout the trip, he said the fish farms had changed all that.

The pens holding the farmed fish, he said, had proved a breeding ground for infestations of sea lice. These tiny crustaceans were once found only in very small numbers on wild fish fresh in from the sea. But the pens multiply them to epidemic proportions, attacking the gills and fins of wild fish as they head out to sea. That in turn disrupts the migration cycle, forcing fish to turn around to seek fresh water, where the lice fall off but where there is little food.

The problem is far more acute for sea trout, which linger in the estuaries where the pens are situated, while salmon head swiftly out to sea. Still, both species have been affected.

	Michael St. Maur Sheil/Black Star, for The New York Times
	Kieran Thompson, song of the Newport House's proprietor, and his dog Sam fishing on the Newport River, between Newport Bay and Lough Beltra in County Mayo.

Unlike wild fish, those in pens can be treated in a chemical bath or given food with lice medication.

As Kieran and I cast our way down the Newport River, we saw nothing beyond a few brown trout rising to the surface, but nary a salmon or a sea trout -- tribute either to the veracity of this story of ecological decline, or to my ineptitude as a tyro salmon fisher. The next day, Beltra Lough yielded much the same result, although we met up with an English couple who had taken an 11 1/2-pound wild salmon a couple of days before.

Fortunately, then, fishing is not the exclusive charm of lakes like Beltra. In these parts of western Ireland, with mighty hills rising from the loughs and estuaries and the kind of silences that city-dwellers forget exists, just being there eases the soul. And, should other appetites intrude, there's always the Kelly Kettle, part of the legend of Irish lough fishing.

This portable object looks like a small milk churn, but, in fact, is built from two skins of metal around a central flue. A fire of kindling is drawn up the flue with the ferocity of a volcano, heating the water around it in no time. Combine that with the clear, peaty water of the lough and the result is a distinctive cup of tea to accompany a packed lunch. After several hours of casting, that came as a pleasure. But still, my fishing log recorded no catches that day, save of a small, lonesome brown trout, which was returned to water.

A two-hour drive south through Westport and Leenane, across peat bog uplands and wild moors, brought me to Ballynahinch castle in County Galway, and a different kind of comfort. The rambling, crenellated, early 19th-century pile dominates the Ballynahinch River and has known various owners, including Maharaja Jam Sahib of Nawanagar, a renowned cricket player and fly-fisher. In recent years, it has been owned by a largely American syndicate.

Of the three places on my itinerary, Ballynahinch had more of a hotel feel than the others. It was the only one to offer television in the rooms. It seemed to cater to American and other tourist groups as well as to anglers. While its public rooms were comfortable, they did not have the quiet, salonlike elegance of Newport. The view from the dining room (and from my room), however, was of a breathtaking stretch of the Ballynahinch River and, before dinner, I followed a manicured trail along the river and through dense forest, watching the stream slide silently by, dark, mysterious and enticing.

By now, a peril of this venture was emerging: there was just too much to eat -- from copious cooked breakfasts to hearty packed lunches to elaborate evening meals. Ballynahinch offered a four-course dinner featuring, among other things, pickled local salmon and honey-roasted duck for around $38, but I settled for a seafood medley, at around $25, and an Alsatian gewürztraminer from an expansive wine list.

And another hazard was becoming apparent: the way things were, with the water low and the fish stocks depleted, it was turning into a fishing trip where the only fish were those on the menu. Michael van Mourik, a gillie of Dutch descent with an Irish brogue, did his best to reverse the trend on the Ballynahinch. He bade me cast across fast runs and down from high banks into a deep, dark stretch of water called the Dentist's Pool. He chose the fly and pointed out where to cast, offering praise for the few on target and a diplomatic silence for those gone astray.

"It's a good spot for salmon, just off the boulder, do you see," he'd say. Or "Did you see that one?" when a sea trout shot out of the water like a submarine-launched missile.

Sadly, though, the fish I caught only seemed to underline the problem: one was a skinny sea trout that should have been feeding at sea but had, the gillie said, been driven back into the fresh water by the sea-lice contamination. The other was a smolt -- a young salmon heading to sea for the first time after two years in fresh water -- that for the same reason had also got trapped in the fresh water, where it would most certainly die.

From Ballynahinch, the drive to Delphi Lodge took less than an hour and I was beginning to feel I would never see a salmon, let alone catch one. That changed only marginally at Delphi: I saw one -- a beautiful, spring salmon, head-and-tailing in the water not 10 yards from the drifting boat I took with a Swiss guest, Urs Liebundgut. We were spending a final hour after settling in there on Finlough, the smaller of the two lakes that form the fishery along with the Bundorragha River. It weighed, probably, eight pounds and, with its disdain for the artificial flies I placed across its path, would probably grow to be a few pounds more.

Peter Mantle, Delphi's owner, bought the lodge -- an elegantly relaxed 1830's country house built for the Marquis of Sligo -- 14 years ago when its sea trout runs were legend. Initially, the 12-bedroom house catered principally to anglers, but around 1990, when fish-farming took root, catches dropped off dramatically. Since then, Mr. Mantle has opened the lodge more to nonangling visitors, while also beginning a program to raise hatchery fish from the river system's genetic stock and releasing 50,000 tagged smolts a year in the hope that some will return as grilse. And he has been at the forefront of legal battles with the commercial fish farmers and the Government, aiming in part to force fish farms to control sea lice and lie fallow during key periods of the wild fishes' life cycles.

Of course, there is another side to the story. The Irish Government and the fish farms say the salmon-farming industry creates jobs in an otherwise depressed area.

The duel has borne some results: in 1998, 1,060 salmon were caught at Delphi, a record for Mr. Mantle's 14 years there, and in May this year, 110 multiwintered spring salmon were caught and mostly released -- another record. He ascribed those figures to the success of his stocking program -- many of the fish had originated as smolts in his hatchery -- and negotiations with the farms to reduce sea lice infestations.

But the statistics miss a point: in these parts, you earn a salmon. Only the fortunate few luck into a fish. Under lodge rules, the only fish that may be kept are salmon tagged as returning hatchery fish. All sea trout and wild salmon must be released.

orget those stories of fanatical fishermen rising before dawn and fishing nonstop until dark. Cooked breakfast started only at a leisurely 9 A.M. and the gillies picked up their clients at 10. The various fishing areas -- two loughs and sections of the river -- are rotated every half day, so a break for lunchtime soup and sandwich fits nicely. By 6, most guests are back in the library and the adjacent lounge with a drink in hand. There's no formal bar -- only a well-stocked trolley with a book to sign on an honor system.

	Michael St. Maur Sheil/Black Star, for The New York Times
	Dinners at the Delphi Lodge are taken at a communal dining table seating up to 26.

All that leads up to what is probably the most distinctive social feature of Delphi Lodge: dinner round a long common table that, in the manner of ambassadorial entertainment, can seat up to 26 for a meal of the same standard as at the other two lodges, with an ample selection of wine. Here, too, the five-course dinner was laid before what is usually an international clientele. During my brief stay, I encountered French, German, Swiss, English and South African guests, and some of them had caught fish.

With time running out, I desperately wanted to join the select few who had boated or landed a salmon or sea trout. Sandy Walker, the gillie, tried hard. Together, we plied the Doolough -- the bigger of the two lakes. The technique is to cast out 15 yards of line and retrieve the artificial flies attached to the leader in the hope that a salmon will go for it. (Salmon do not feed during their spawning runs and no one really knows why they take an artificial fly). I cast and cast, catching only tiny brown trout.

We tried the river, casting from rocky stances into swift, cascading runs. But my fishing log recorded zero for salmon or sea trout, unlike a German guest who not only caught a spring salmon but videotaped it for posterity before releasing it.

Ultimately, it didn't seem to matter that much. The majestic hills, the water lapping against the wooden boat induced a delightful sense of well being. That, at least, is what I told myself as I headed -- fishless -- for Knock airport.

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Where to cast

	Michael St. Maur Sheil/Black Star, for The New York Times
	A guide, James O'Hora, right brews tea in a kelly kettle.

"The Great Fishing Houses of Ireland" is free from the Irish Tourist Board, 345 Park Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10154; (212) 418-0800 or (800) 223-6470, fax (212) 371-9052; www .ireland.travel.ie. The accommodations it lists range from lodges for the budget conscious to five-star places.

At Ballynahinch Castle, Recess, County Galway, phone (353-95) 31006, fax (353-95) 31085, www .commerce.ie/ballynahinch, the 40 rooms, including 4 suites, cost $84 to $162 a person, double occupancy, including breakfast (at $1.30 to the punt). Dinner costs $32.50. River fishing is $78 a day, a gillie $45 a day.

Delphi Lodge, Leenane, County Galway, (353-95) 42222, fax (353-95) 42296, www.delphilodge.ie, charges $39 to $78 a person, including breakfast, for its 12 rooms. Dinner is $38. River or lough fishing costs $52 to $104 a day, a gillie $52.

Newport House, Newport, County Mayo, (353-98) 41222, fax (353-98) 41613, (search for the Web site at www.relaischateaux.fr/f-rech -en.htm), has 18 rooms for $156 to $202 a person, including breakfast. Dinner $42. Lough fishing costs $143 for two, including a gillie; river fishing is $39 a day a person.