Otter News Archive

It was the type of a night that stamps indelible memories – the stars flickered above the old corn store, fresh floods plunged over quaint old waterfalls and a powerful river forced a great spray through the bulging flood gates.

It was a St. Stephen's night with my angling friend, the late Willy "Hooker" Halloran, we were looking over the bridge by the side of the old mill when suddenly we heard the otter, splashing about in a small pool on the island behind the mill. Then he approached – it was a big dog otter – glowing in the moonlight and sliding over the waterfall into a nearer pool.

On another occasion, with the famous "Hooker " who was the most skilled dry fly trout angler and a salmon fisher of his era, we were standing on another bridge about two miles up river from the mill.

It was a moonlit summer's night, pushing midnight when we saw a luminous object well downriver floating in and out towards the bank. Neither of us had a clue what it was. Up towards us it swam, occasionally climbing on to the bank.

Then as it came close to the bridge, the "luminous ball" struggled on to a big flat boulder in the middle of the river which was well above water at summer level. It was, of course, an otter and after a good look at us dived back and disappeared.

Otters have become very scarce and I've often wondered are there any now in that same stretch of river. Usually a dog otter requires to control a 12 mile stretch in addition to the side streams, while a bitch will only lay claim to six or seven miles.

Sly, illusive and a solitary creature, it's quite difficult to get an exact count of how many there are in our waterways. Mostly nocturnal, they are not seen very often and the only way to get a fairly accurate number is to watch out for their spraints.

The otter spraint, its droppings, is usually left on an exposed rock on the river. The brown stool has a musty odour and it always contains fish bones – seen as white little specks. The spraint is left on the rock to mark a territory and woe betide a mate that enters the stretch, even if only by way of passing through.

A carnivore, the otter consumes snails, insects, frogs and even water fowl eggs, but its main diet is fish. A nice little wriggling eel tops the menu but the otter being an expert fisher is never short of a trout or even a salmon. Judging from the amount of bones in the spraint, some roach, perch or rudd, all very bony fish are also consumed.

The matings sometimes take place in the water and there are two or three cubs born in the spring of the year in a holt. The holt is the otter's home. It's usually located under the bank of a river, often concealed by the roots of a blown down tree.

Sometimes a shiny well worn flag marks the entrance where the bitch and her cubs play. One of the peculiarities of this water-loving creature is that the cubs are reluctant to take their first swim and have to be encouraged by mom and sometimes having to be pushed.

Otters are prone to pick up disease and years ago easily fell foul to distemper whic h then was very contagious. Distemper is mostly associated with dogs, often having wiped out a whole population in an area. Up to the 1960s it was nearly always fatal but there are vaccines now which prevent it.

Twice in the early 1900s the otter population in this country was decimated by this disease. Otters never fully recovered numerically and the further decline in the numbers in the 1960s and 1970s was attributed to poisoning from insecticides and pollution.

In the old days numbers were also kept in check by trapping, shooting, hunting and even netting. Because of the beauty of the otter's fur, it was always in great demand for ladies' wear.

Under the 1976 Wildlife Act otters are now a protected species but they don't appear to have increased in numbers, despite this protection in addition to a strictly imposed ban on hunting the creature with a pack of otter hounds.

Otter Joy is wholly owned by L.C. Wright and has no affiliation with any organisaiton or body