An elderly man with a beard passed me in a supermarket the other day.

“Not long now,” he remarked.

For me or him, I wondered?

I’m a few years fresher than the pensioner but he was the one looking more like a spring chicken, whereas I felt like an old turkey. And come this time of year, longevity is not something that troubles our feathered friends.

Forsaking my well thumbed copy of The Hypochondriacs Handbook, I immediately phoned my doctor for an appointment, but this being the NHS the appointment wasn’t immediately forthcoming.

“He can see you in a fortnight,” chirped the receptionist.

Given her cheerful demeanour and years of experience in dealing with patients I took this as a positive prognosis. I was going to be around in a fortnight and that means I’m going to be on the River Drowes on New Year’s Day.

There’s nothing more life-affirming for a salmon angler than to stand on the banks of the Drowes on January 1.

You have survived Christmas, and last night. Hell, you’ve survived another year.

That’s what my old friend in the supermarket was talking about. Come this time of the year salmon anglers start counting the days until January 1.

What really makes the day is someone catching a shiny, silver, spring salmon. You might have lived another year but given the concerns for the future of the King of Fish there is always a nagging doubt that some day they won’t be around any more. So it’s fingers and toes crossed that, even if you don’t do the business and catch Ireland’s first salmon of 2015, someone else will.

Some anglers have taken the salmon’s plight to heart and now practise catch-and-release, whereby they handle their catch with care and gently put the fish back into the water.

According to the most recent figures, based on anglers’ catch returns, a total of 904 salmon were caught on the Drowes in 2013. Almost a third of them were returned alive, hopefully to spawn and produce the next generation.

Of the 279 spring salmon, caught between January 1, and May 31, 86 were released.

Of the 625 summer grilse, caught between June 1, and September 30, 228 were returned to the river.

The catch returns for 2014 are still to be correlated and the findings will not be published until this time next year but anecdotally it was not a vintage year for salmon fishing.

As Shane Gallagher, owner of the Drowes fishery, says: “The catches for 2014 will be well down on the 2013 figures. I expect them to be well down because it was a disastrous year all over.” All over Ireland and from the Scotland to the east coast of Canada the salmon fishing was poor. Locally the hot, dry summer took its toll. Faced with certain defeat, many anglers threw in the beach towel.

“Because of the long extended drought, coupled with the lower numbers of fishermen, the numbers of salmon caught will be well down,” Shane predicts.

He keeps a log book at the fishery office at Lareen and although not every catch is recorded within its pages it provides a snap shot of how the season unfolded.

“Having a quick scan of the log book, catches would be well down, especially for grilse,” says Shane.

It also shows that when last winter’s floods eventually subsided the spring salmon fishing in March and April was on a par with previous years. The biggest fish recorded weighed 18.5 pounds.

Catches may have been well down but there were still plenty of salmon in the river. Most of them are still there. They have only started to spawn, prompted by the first frosts of the winter.

Anglers will be trying to avoid catching these fish, in their so-last-season red and black colours. They will be looking for a silver salmon, fresh from the Atlantic ocean.

Based on observations of the number of salmon spawning in the Drowes and the tributaries of Lough Melvin, which it drains, the scientists have come up with a total allowable catch of 2,739 salmon in 2015.

That is the number of salmon that can be caught while still maintaining a healthy, self-sustaining population.

“It has always been around 2,500 to 3,000,” says Shane.

Rivers that do not have this “exploitable, harvestable surplus”, as the scientists refer to it, have been closed to fishing to allow numbers to recover. As a consequence the River Leannan in north Donegal has been off limits to anglers for a number of years.

However, on January 1, it is to opening again for spring salmon fishing, albeit on a catch-and-release basis.

Shane welcomes this “excellent news”.

“Hopefully this will be the first step in restoring what must be potentially, one of Europe’s pre-eminent early spring rivers, back to its rightful place,” he adds.

However, most Fermanagh anglers will head to the Drowes on New Year’s Day, where fishing starts at 8.30am.

The cost of fishing remains unchanged. A day permit is 25 euro and a season permit 300 euro.

Anglers also require a state licence costing 56 euro for the Ballyshannon District, which covers the Drowes and the Duff, or 100 euro for a licence covering all districts.

Licences and permits are available from the tackle shop at Lareen which is open from 8.30am in the run up to January 1, and from 6.30am on New Year’s Day. Brian McEvoy, from Enniskillen, was the last Fermanagh angler to catch the first salmon of the season on the River Drowes, way back on New Year’s Day 2010.