Far more than just a tasty dish, salmon is embedded in Irish history and is also a tourist lure.
For generations, fishing enthusiasts have been drawn to Ireland in search of what in its Gaelic language is called a Bradán, or more commonly, an Atlantic Salmon. For more than two millennia, the Irish people have fished salmon. It is key to its cuisine, has been featured on Irish currency, and is a common symbol throughout its ancient storytelling. One salmon was all it took to create Finn McCool, perhaps Ireland’s most important mythological figure.
Yet few tourists would know of the fish’s deep significance in Irish history, culture, and folklore–let alone the heroic tale of Finn McCool.
Ireland’s Folklore Hero
The 1,800-year-old story of this warrior-poet has been taught to generations of Irish students. It is a key reason why salmon has such a prominent position in Irish culture. McCool was an ordinary boy until he learned a secret held by Druid sorcerers. In Ireland’s Well of Wisdom hid a speckled salmon that possessed all the world’s knowledge, which would be acquired by whoever consumed this fish. McCool’s master eventually caught this magical salmon. But it was his young apprentice who tasted it first, turning McCool into the wisest and most powerful man in Ireland, the leader of the country’s mightiest army, performer of miracles, and defender of the nation.
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McCool felled a giant, created islands, built roads across oceans, inspired a people, shaped Irish legend, and is hibernating in a cave waiting to save his country when it most needs him. It is he who “created” Northern Ireland’s most-visited tourist attraction, the Giant’s Causeway. This dramatic cluster of 40,000 black basalt columns which protrude from the Irish Sea was supposedly placed there by McCool. They provided him a path to Scotland so he could fight his foe, Scottish giant Benandonner.
None of these feats would have been achieved by that mythical Irish hero if not for the country’s most famous fish species.
All these years later, tourists may still encounter this Irish lionheart as they explore his home country. There are statues of McCool from County Kildare in Ireland’s east to County Leitrim in the west. It is in this latter, wilderness-strewn region that salmon are most prolific.
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Tracking Fantasies and Fish
Particularly in Mayo, the largest county in western Ireland, tourists will find nods to McCool’s Salmon of Knowledge. Large sections of this land are notoriously poor for farming–rocky, marshy, windswept. Yet scattered through its fields and hugging its coastline are rivers, lakes, and the Atlantic Ocean, which bulge with some of the world’s finest salmon.
Every July, since 1964, Mayo has celebrated this connection with its summer Ballina Salmon Festival. This eight-day event, which features live music, seafood stalls, art displays, and guided tours of salmon fishing spots, takes place in the picturesque town of Ballina, wedged between the craggy Ox Mountains and emerald farmland.
Ballina used to be removed from Ireland’s tourist trail, tucked away in Mayo’s far north but has been enjoying a resurgence. President Joe Biden has made several high-profile visits to his ancestral home of Ballina, staying at its magnificent 19th-century manor, Mount Falcon. Meanwhile, tourists are now directed through Ballina by the Wild Atlantic Way, a hugely popular, 1,600-mile driving route that traces Ireland’s entire west coast. As travelers follow this path, they pass many of Ireland’s prime salmon fishing spots.
From January to October, this native fish can be found in many of Ireland’s 70,000 k.m. (43,500 miles) worth of rivers and streams, as well as dozens of lakes. The first three months of the year can be jarringly cold, especially while exposed to the elements with a fishing rod in hand. Which makes April onwards the prime salmon season. During summer, from June to August, fishing tourists flock to Mayo’s famed River Moy. This 70-mile, salmon-rich river flows from County Sligo south through Mayo, piercing the towns of Swinford and Foxford before terminating at Ballina, where it joins the Atlantic.
Tourists can begin fishing once they purchase a salmon and sea trout license from the Inland Fisheries Ireland website, which also explains the locations where they can legally fish. Those seeking bulky springer salmon can perch themselves at Mayo’s Carrowmore Lake, about 25 miles west of Ballina, or along the Owenduff River, just south of that lake. Or they can head to the Drowes River, which flows through Leitrim and County Donegal, to the north of Mayo.
In each of those towns, tourists can find tackle shops that rent the gear essential for fly fishing or bait fishing. Ask the staff, and they’ll likely relay the story of McCool, an ordinary boy who became an extraordinary man thanks to a magical fish. Nearly 2,000 years later, his tale lives on as strongly as Ireland’s connection to salmon.