Could some one clear you my confusion over these names.

Sonaghan
Gillaroo
Dollaghan
Grilse
Ferrox

Heard all these words in a conversation with a friend last weekend some of them are to do with lough melvin if I'm right? Didn't ask him or I would have been standing in main street for 3 hours.

Flyinghigh

All are types of Salmo Trutta (trout).except Grilse which is a small salmon.

Jim

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Sonaghan - a particular strain of brown trout indigenous to Lough Melvin.
Gillaroo - another strain of brown trout distinguished by its colouration and snail diet.
Dollaghan - a strain of trout (Lough Neagh?) that, like a sea trout, 'runs' from the lough to the tributary streams to spawn.
Grilse - a salmon that has usually spent one or two years feeding in the sea on its maiden voyage back to its spawning stream.
Ferox - a brown trout that has a predominantly fish diet - usually associated with deep lakes of glacial origin that contain an indigenous population of char which forms the mainstay of the ferox's diet.

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Yes, Lough Neagh for dollaghan. I've seen them running the Ballinderry River in late summer, and they can be pretty big. When I was serving over there in the RAF, I was told that another strain of lough trout, the boddha, or black boddha also ran the river. I was lead to believe the boddha was a deep, almost hump-backed fish. Never hooked a specimen of either type, but saw a 12 year old lad land a four-pounder on his dad's double-handed rod. TC

Terry, the names you mention are all local names for dollaghan. When I first fished the Lough Neagh rivers back in the '60s, my then mentor told me that the first dollaghan to run (in early August at that time) were known as 'pollan', small-headed and silvery like the fish in Lough Neagh of that name. In those days, they ran to around 5lbs.

Next to run were the Boddagh, in September if the water was right. These were short, dark and, as you say, hump-backed and you might get a seven pounder if you were lucky. Finally, the Black Boddagh, same shape and colouration as the Boddagh but could run well into double figures. The open/closed seasons were different then as well and since only the Maine and Blackwater of the Lough Neagh rivers remained open until 31st October, you wouldn't see the big fellas in many of them. The Coalisland lads knew how to catch them but were as tight as a duck's ar*e and I never did manage to extract their secrets

Haven't fished the dollaghan run for years as most back-ends find me chasing seatrout in the West. I suppose with climate change and stuff, it's all up the left these days

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HI', SR. Or should that be SIR?
Thanks for the prompt. I remember the sequence of the runs now that you have described them. I remember seeing a fish into the 'teens of pounds 'porpoising' about forty yards below the footbridge near Coagh. The lad hooked the four-pounder about thirty yards or so above the bridge. That must have been in August, as the father and son were camping out in a tent there. Cheers,Terry.
PS I remember now, the father was a school teacher, from Belfast. Happy days.
I wasn't all that long out of school myself in 1953!!

Terry there are of course regional variations of species to consider?

The 'Trite' from Hampshire and wealthy counties, the 'Traaat' from the Newark area, the 'Troooot' from Bonny Scotland etc.

Regards
Jas

Hi', Jas. Continuing in this lighter vein, there are 'slobs', also; but we shouldn't lower the standard by saying where we see them, and how they behave.
Bull trout was, I believe, another name for sea trout, and the most spectacular from our area must have been the 'great, grey trout' of Ullswater, a couple of examples of which were examined by experts of the day, and said to be salmo trutta. TC
PS The name that puzzled me when I first heard it was 'brandling', a local name for salmon parr, I thought; but it is used elsewhere.
There are, of course, numerous alternative names for various species, most tend to be descriptive. One of the most obvious being a name used by natives of Alston Moor, Cumberland, my place of origin -- as children, we called stone loach, 'hairy gobs'; while in the Carlisle area, just 28 miles away, they are known as 'cock-leggies'.
Any more to add to this most inoffensive and totally unprovocative thread?

I always understood that grilse was the term for fish (salmon) that have spent only year at sea (one sea winter) before returning. Any fish that has spent two years at sea (two sea winters) is called a salmon not a grilse.


Sadly I have no regional names for minnows or bullheads to add to the list...

A grilse is a one-sea-winter-fish; another name for a bullhead is 'Miller's thumb'.
and in some parts of the north, minnows are called 'Minnims'. I think they use the term over the Border, too. TC