Stephen lands monster salmon

August 1999

LOCAL MAN Stephen Sutton can shelve forever those well worn angling clichés about the one which got away... after he landed one of the biggest salmon ever caught in Bray’s Dargle River.

For he’s a fisherman who now has a tale which he can proudly tell for years to come - thanks to a titanic hour-long struggle to land a ‘monster of a fish’, last Tuesday morning.

It’s the stuff of every angler’s dreams - and one which the Boghall Road man admits will live with him for a long time.

Travelling early last Tuesday monring up to the popular angling location of Angler’s Falls at Dargle Valley outside Enniskerry, Stephen Sutton was on the riverbank just a short time when he got his crucial bite.

On the lookout for sea torut at the time and with only a 10lb line on his rod, Stephen found instead that he had hooked a salmon and a heavyweight one at thata.

‘I had to play him on the line for quite some time before reeling him in and beacuase I didn’t even have a landing net with me I had to eventually beach him up on the bank and then grab him by the tail and pull him up on the rocks.’

The monster salmon which Stephen landed weighed in at 21.5 lbs and is reckoned to be one of the biggest ever to be found in the Dargle River. A keen fishing enthusiast all his life, Stephen said this week that he was hoping to have his trophy catch stuffed for posterity.

‘I’m looking at present for someone who will mount him for me,’ he said.

‘It’s a fantastic experience to make such a catch when you are a fisherman,’ he said. ‘And it was particularly pleasing to find such a big fish in the local river.’