THE ULTIMATE ANGLING BUCKET LIST

There was no Irish Sea. Just for the most part an empty basin in the middle of which was a body of runoff
water forming a large lake linked to the surrounding land and distant ice free sea by a number of
rivers.
This lake was post glacial Lough Hibernia, and in it lived members of a family of fishes known as the
whitefishes, represented in the present day British Isles by Coregonus lavaretus, the English schelly,
Welsh gwyniad and Scottish powan, which despite the name differences are all the same fish, and
Coregonus albula, the English vendace and the Irish pollan. Then, as the ice lost its strangle hold and
started to melt, sea levels began to rise, eventually creating the geography we see today.
At some stage in that transition, the sea broke through the Kintyre land bridge isolating Ireland from
Scotland, eventually filling up the Irish Sea.
As it did, it obviously mixed with the waters of Lough Hibernia greatly increasing salinity levels there,
either killing off its intolerant inhabitants, or as in the case of the whitefish species, sending them
scurrying up the nearest rivers, initially populating many stretches and lakes, until ultimately when
things became too warm for them, at most locations they died out, leaving just the handful of scattered
remnant struggling populations we have today.
Seven populations of Coregonus lavaretus are recorded as managing to hang on in the British Isles, all
of them living in England, Scotland and Wales. None survived in Ireland, though the Irish have four of
the seven recorded populations of Coregonus albula, which because there is no rod caught record for
that species, ceases to be of interest to us here.
Schelly are found in Ullswater, Haweswater, Brothers Water and Red Tarn in Cumbria, Llyen Tegid
which is Bala Lake in Wales (gwyniad), and Lochs Lomond and Eck in Scotland (powan). However,
when I first became interested in the species, Brothers Water was not an inclusion on that list.
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