Fishing

Herring and Salmon

A charter from 1572 documents Badentarbet as a farm associated in the Coigach rentals with the island of Tanera Mor until the latter was given over to sheep farming in 1763. From the 1820s there were attempts to sub divide the farm between the tacksman and subtenants with the creation of discrete allotments for crofts. It was cleared in 1842 and became a small sheep farm.

There were two main types of fishing associated with the Badentarbet area, inshore salmon fishing and herring fishing in which Tanera Mor played a significant part. Herring had been fished in the West Coast waters since the 16th century but in the middle of the 18th century interest grew in exploiting the full potential of the West Coast fishery, particularly the massive shoals of migrating herring which would visit the coast and its sea lochs.

In 1775 a herring station was established on Isle Martin, soon followed by one at Culag, Lochinver and then Tanera in 1784. Started by Roderick Morrison, this was 4 years before Ullapool was established by the forerunner of the British Fisheries Society. In partnership with John Mackenzie, Morrison erected warehouses for salt, casks and nets and built 5 smokehouses for red herring. The processed fish - pickled in salt, smoked and barrelled - were sent to Liverpool for export to Ireland and the West Indies for feeding slaves on the plantations. By the start of the 19th century, the large shoals were no longer coming to the West Coast. This, along with falling demand from the West Indian market, saw the industry fall into a terminal decline.

The main salmon fisheries in Coigach in ‘old times’ were on the rivers - the Polly, Kanaird and Ullapool - fished using traps in the rivers and net and coble in the estuaries. This continued into the 19th century. Coastal bag-nets were introduced in the 1820s to catch fish before they reached the rivers. Added to this were tidal fish traps which caught all sorts of fish - the ones we see were mainly built in the 1820s and ‘30s by landowners or large farmers e.g. Keanchulish. Legislation in the 1860s banned traps etc from the estuaries. The end result was to focus the commercial fishing effort along the coasts leaving the rivers mainly to sport.

To the south of the road over the burn is the old salmon bothy, renovated as holiday accommodation. The bothy originally extended further west and was used for equipment storage and for preparing and curing the catch. The salmon would either be packed in crates with ice or lightly poached and preserved in a mild pickle for onward transport as far south as Billingsgate fish market in London. The old basement ice house, dating from the early 19th century, is on the other side of the road. The upper section was latterly used as a net shed. The shallow ice pond behind was artificially created by diverting the nearby burn. Every winter when the pond froze the ice would be harvested and the underground space of the building packed with it, the collective coolth and limited surface area making it possible for ice to remain frozen through the summer. By the early 1990s fishermen had given up due to a combination of economic factors caused by a reduction in salmon numbers and the proliferation of fish farming.