THE BIG INTERVIEW NORMAN DUNLOP
NORMAN DUNLOP, BELFAST BORN, now retired in Dublin, spent 31 years (1978-2009) as the National Sea Angling Advisor for the former Central Fisheries Board, and finally Inland Fisheries Ireland. Part of his remit was to identify and catalogue the sea angling opportunities throughout the country.
The long-term aim was to collate as much information as possible that would then be used to encourage anglers from overseas to visit Ireland and create angling tourism.
Q Was it a family influence that got you into fishing, or someone else?
ND: It was my grandfather who introduced me to fishing when I was six. I remember my first acquaintances with sea sickness, but my abiding memory is of boating a cod almost as big as myself. I guess that must have been during the summer of 1952.
As I got older, I regularly fished the ponds and streams around the eastern side of Belfast. Eels also featured in my early memories from the pondage in Victoria Park, under the shadow of the huge cranes of the Harland and Wolff shipyards. Occasional trips on the train to Bangor would see us fish the pier for summer mackerel and garfish, plus autumnal whiting and codling.
In my early teens my pals and I cycled to venues further afield including rock fishing below the Coastguard station at Orlock Head,
