Fishing is free in Newfoundland. There is public ownership of riparian rights. No landlords can lay claim to the best stretches of water. There are no licence fees charged or paid.

To anyone brought up dealing with private ownership of rivers, of half-mile reaches, even of individual salmon pools, not to mention boards of conservators with their rules, regulations, restrictions, permits, fees, leases, and bloody bailiffs, Newfoundland is a little bit of heaven on earth. Its friendly inhabitants make it seem even more so.

There is something about permits and licences that sparks an innate reaction. Forbid something, and someone will always do that very thing. "Don’t eat that apple!" And the apple is eaten.

We are all human, subject to temptation, and nothing tempts a fisherman more than a sign saying "Fishing Prohibited", especially if the fisherman and his family are locals, and the sign is posted on behalf of a Marquis, or a Lord, or a johnny-jumped-up squire with a Sir in front of his name, all living in London, or Berkshire, or any other of the Home Counties.

Given that climate, to some poaching was almost a patriotic duty. Unfortunately, His Lordship’s bailiff’s also had their duty to perform, and when the two duties collided the outcome was often unpredictable.

Take the time the two McNally brothers, long since crossed over the Styx, were surprised by a pack of bailiffs as they lugged home four fine 20-pound salmon, the harvest of two hours pool snatching, one early summer morning. A foot race ensued. Its course led through Teevan’s farmyard.

Teevan had just finished milking his cows and was back indoors having his breakfast. Quick as a flash the salmon disappeared into the big metal milk cans waiting to be transported to the local creamery. So, when the brothers slowed down, allowing the bailiffs to catch up with them, the evidence had disappeared. No fish, no prosecution.

But, when the McNallys went back to retrieve their salmon, the creamery lorry (truck) had come and gone, carrying Teevan’s milk cans and forty others besides. And when the cans were emptied into one huge vat at the creamery, out poured the salmon, and the creamery manager condemned the whole vat of milk on the spot. For months afterwards the McNallys were not very popular with a number of farmers.

That was one price paid for poaching. Another, and more severe one, saddened the whole town.

Kevin was eighteen, going on nineteen. A quiet young lad, he could have passed unnoticed among twenty of his fellows. His single distinguishing talent was swimming. He could, as the saying goes, swim like a fish.

One moonless night Kevin was out poaching on the catwalk, a narrow cement wall only wide enough for a single person, less than a hundred yards upriver from the Falls of Assaroe. Over those Falls the river had thundered for four thousand years of recorded history. Coming upstream they blocked Partholan in 3,950 B.C., when he attempted to push inland. His wife’s dog, Saimer, was buried on the little island below them, hence its name, Inis Saimer, the Island of Saimer.

Kevin wasn’t thinking of Partholan that night. Behind him on the catwalk was the head bailiff. There was no escape route but one, and Kevin took it, straight into the river, He had swum it before, but this time something went wrong. Over the Falls he went, his head bashed on a rock, his lungs filled with water, and he was floating face down when pulled from the Great Pool, a half hour later. He survived for three days, and on the third night he died.

His funeral was one of the quietest the town ever saw. Silence enfolded the circumstances of his death. The word poaching was never mentioned. Kevin had paid the greatest price of all, his life.

The End

Note: Nowadays, where a tailrace has replaced the once great river, the Erne, confining it in a man-made channel between walls of dynamited rock, local lads with fishing rods are regularly chased away by employees of the semi-state owned Electricity Supply Board, the successors of the bailiffs. And, not content with Assaroe, now the ESB wants to desecrate the very hills of Donegal with unsightly pylons. It’s not the west’s asleep, it’s the north-west if it tolerates this further contemptible treatment by a state-owned body headquartered in Dublin.