There is a fine tradition of mackerel fishing along the seafront in Galway city, all the way out to Salthill. And there is nothing finer than mackerel – grilled, smoked, pickled or whizzed into a pate (I’ve got a tub of smoked mackerel pate in the fridge – Cabot’s of Westport – which is fantastic). The great thing about living on the west coast is that every good restaurant has their own twist on mackerel and they are all good. A decade ago, I used to live beside the Galway Docks, and exactly ten years ago, I spotted a commotion down by the water one evening, where the Galway Docks meets the Long Walk. The mackerel ‘was in’, and there was a group of youngsters hauling them out by the bucketful. The light was fading, so the picture above was taken at ISO3200 at 1/13th of a second – I had to wait for the just-caught fish in the foreground to stop flipping before taking the picture.