BIG READ: Kilkenny fishing community remembers one of its favourite sons

Fishing is a pastime that many in the community enjoy for a variety of reasons. From escaping the stresses of everyday life to the thrill of making the catch.

Its benefits know no limits. In Kilkenny, one family holds fishing close to its heart.

The Ramsbottoms have had a deep association and connection with fishing for many years, with the linchpin of that tradition being their late father, Sydney (Syd).

In October last year, The Rock Fishing Club in Threecastles and the wider Kilkenny City & County Anglers family honoured Syd’s contribution by christening their final competition of the fishing season, ‘The Syd Ramsbottom Memorial,’ creating the competition’s perpetual trophy in his memory and unveiling three specially designed shields, much to the delight of his family, including keen fisherman and son, Micky Ramsbottom.

“It was a great day out,” Micky commented, hailing the club’s kind gesture to the Ramsbottom family.
“What the club did was fantastic,” his daughter Kay Brennan (née Ramsbottom) added.

“One of the things that I take away with me from that evening in the Rock Bar was all the stories that people who fished with Daddy told,” Kay commented.

The esteem in which Syd was/is held was evident on the day, with his legacy being carried out in the club through Micky.

“The club goes back to around the 1900s,” he said.“I’m 70 years of age now, and I’ve been going up there since I was a child with my father at seven or eight years of age. Now, my father could only bring one of us at a time, as he had a Honda 90, and once you’d go, you’d go for the day—specifically to ‘The Rock’,” a nostalgic Micky recalled.

Micky spent much of his childhood on the Nore-Dinan waterways with his dad, with the sight of sandwiches being packed away at home a sign Syd was preparing for a long day on the river.

“We were such a closely-knit family,” he said. “We fished every single Sunday, and we’ve carried on that tradition,” noting his brother John was also a talented fisherman in the family and a key reason why Micky continued to this very day.

“(After he died) it was hard to go to certain spots to go fishing because you’d be fishing away, and one of us would mention ‘he used to be here,’ and in actual fact there was one place on the river where he used to tie lines out of a certain tree, and only up to ten years ago they were still there.

“(When we were fishing together) it was a time where you had him cornered and you could ask him things he wouldn’t tell you at home because he was a quiet man, there’s a host of stuff we don’t know about our dad he went to the grave with, he was old school. His left hand didn’t know what his right hand was doing,” according to Micky.

“It was all handed down from our father, you couldn’t but fish, everything was about fishing, he adored it.

“It was all about fishing and it was about food, whereas nowadays, it’s all catch and release, which is the right thing to do because salmon is scarce now,” adding had they known in that era, fisherman may have been more conscious of the future repercussions.

A widely reported decline in the fishing industry has been somewhat replicated in day-to-day fishing, albeit for different reasons, as fishing among the younger generation is not as prominent as it once was. But what’s to blame?

“One word, technology, that’s it,” Ramsbottom claimed. “That’s the whole reason we (The Rock Fishing Club) put a total emphasis on a good day out fishing so we can get as many kids as we can away from screens,” he added.

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And so far locally, the club have been successful in that regard, ‘hooking’ an interest in many younger people. "Our aim is to try and entice them, show them and introduce them and try and get them really interested (in fishing) and hopefully the ones that really are, down the line, will form a committee and keep the club going,” Micky remarked.

“Everyone is on an even par and everybody helps. Young people learn other skills like sharing and chipping in as a result.

But putting down the screen is one thing, the next step is being geared up and prepared to fish, but what makes a good fisherman, and does Micky get the same satisfaction out on the water as he did all those years ago?

“When you’re young, you’re dreaming about the big fish, you always want to catch the most, you always want to have the biggest fish, but then as life goes, you learn being a good fisherman is not what you catch or how you catch it. I think it’s about being there and environment.”

Unlike many other sports, fishing also has a uniquely enticing factor. You can go solo and leave the commercial world behind or head out with friends or family. The choice is individualised.

However, portrayals of it as a lonely exercise couldn’t be further from the truth...

“You can ring up one of the lads and say, ‘I’m going somewhere,’ and usually they’d say ‘God yeah’ if they have time. You’ll always meet someone on the river, you could be alone on a stretch of river, but if you go up along a meander, you always meet someone, and you’ll always know them. You can always be sure to meet someone, and in a way, that’s security.

“Fishing cleanses you. You’re under no pressure. I usually turn off the phone, it’s all happening all around you, and you’re at one with it. It’s a really deep meditation. It is spiritual.”

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