Ireland’s last wild fish smoker is a 69-year-old woman dedicated to preserving the ancient ways

I’ve never quite enjoyed the taste of salmon. But as I plop a piece of apricot-colored, cold-smoked Atlantic salmon into my mouth, my fingers coming away coated in just the slightest bit of oil, I reconsider—salmon is definitely for me. It’s buttery, delicately sweet, with a slightly smoky and silky texture. Most importantly, it’s wild.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it,” says Sally Ferns-Barnes, as I reach for yet another piece. Barnes is Ireland’s last wild fish smoker, and an ocean conservationist who, for nearly 50 years, has committed to exclusively working with wild fish using ancient preservation methods.

I’m sitting at her wooden kitchen table in her house just outside the west Cork town of Skibbereen (she’s often referred to as ‘Skibbereen Sally’), where green hills roll into each other like waves, and cattle lows echo even as the rain and wind make the bushes and wildflowers quake. Barnes has invited me into her home to sample some of her smoked products, which she sells online, including a crumbly, melt-in-your mouth hot-smoked albacore tuna and a slab of cold-smoked Atlantic salmon, still donning its coat of scales and a glistening pectoral fin. Loose-leaf tea, organic crème fraîche mixed with horseradish, 40-year-old aged shoyu sauce, and wholewheat crackers round out the informal tasting session.

The 69-year-old ‘smoker’, a Scotswoman with silvery chin-length hair and a seemingly perpetual glint in her eyes, moved to Ireland in 1975 with her ex-husband, a commercial fisherman. Having no freezer and little culinary experience, she began smoking fish to preserve the abundance of fresh catch that her ex was bringing home, including mackerel, sprat, and Atlantic salmon—sometimes missing chunks of lean flesh where seals had taken a nibble or two.

In the late 1970s, the fish stocks in Ireland were so plentiful that salmon fishing constituted the family’s main income. “You’d make money in the summer fishing salmon, and then it didn’t matter if you didn’t make money on the lobsters or crabs throughout the winter, it was that abundant,” she says.

“Having been the wife of a former commercial fisherman, I could not, in conscience, work with any farmed fish. It is who I am.”

- Sally Ferns-Barnes

In 1979, the best year for salmon fishing (Barnes’ ex-husband caught 249 in just one day), a smoker they sold their catch to reneged on payment—this sent the family spiraling into debt. At the time, Barnes had a young daughter and was pregnant with another. Two years later, as part of a court settlement, Barnes was given an electrically-powered steel smoker’s kiln and her business Woodcock Smokery was born.

From the beginning, Barnes has only ever smoked wild fish. Just like early mankind, our ancestors, who have been using smoke to cook fish as far back as the Paleolithic period, her three main tools are plenty of salt, a sharp knife, and hardwood smoke.

Over 45 years, she’s become an expert in the traditional methods of filleting, salting, brining, and smoking fish, mastering trickier methods like cold-smoking, a delicate, labor-intensive process that doesn’t cook the fish but rather uses low-temperature smoke to dehydrate it and increase shelf life. This results in a silky texture with a delicate smoky flavor. It’s little wonder she’s widely considered a pioneer of Ireland’s slow food renaissance.

Despite Ireland being an island with over 4,600 miles (7.400 kilometers) of coastline and 220 million acres of marine territory, it’s very difficult to work with wild fish. Only about 15 percent of the fish caught in Irish waters are caught by Irish fishermen—the rest are caught by large fishing fleets belonging to other European Union nations, as permitted by the 1983 Common Fisheries Policy. This allows EU members access to the fishing grounds of other member states, including those in Ireland.

The situation has only been exacerbated by the Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA), the 2021 post-Brexit trade deal between the United Kingdom and the EU that requires European fleets to transfer some of their fish quotas in the Atlantic back to the UK. These combined factors have made Ireland and its small fishing communities one of the worst affected from this deal, with an estimated annual loss of EUR€43 million (USD$49).

Add to this the overall strain fish stocks are experiencing everywhere, and it’s not hard to see why Barnes’ commitment to working with local wild stocks is an incredibly volatile choice. “I may be mad to decide to work exclusively with wild fish, as all stocks are under pressure now,” she says. “Having been the wife of a former commercial fisherman, I could not, in conscience, work with any farmed fish. It is who I am.”

And it’s paid off. Her steadfast dedication to wild stocks and her ensuing high-quality smoked fish products have won her numerous accolades within Ireland and abroad. She was the first Irish producer to win the Supreme Champion award at the Great Taste Awards in 2006 and she was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Irish Food Writers’ Guild in 2022.

While Barnes’ vast knowledge of the ocean is tempered by her deep respect for its many critters, both big and small, it is the Atlantic salmon that she reveres above all. “When I work with them I find myself stroking them,” she laughs. “I do revere them because they’ve had such an extraordinary journey to come under my hands and under my knife.”

Ireland has enjoyed a relationship with wild Atlantic salmon for centuries, and the fish is interwoven in Irish folklore and culinary heritage. The country’s great rivers once teemed with so many of the creatures that it was said you could walk upon their glittering backs.

Her coastal foraging classes, for example, take guests to wade in whirlpools and forage for edible ingredients at the water line—including chanterelle mushrooms, sea radish, shellfish, and seaweed—which are then made into a meal and eaten.

Today, these stories are not much more than myth and legend. As the country’s in-shore waters, rivers, and wetlands ecosystems choke on pollutants, the Irish icon has all but disappeared from the waters it called home for generations. “I’ve had such a struggle to maintain myself in this business over the years that I feel like a salmon. I’m kind-of going upstream against the flow because I’ve stuck to my guns,” explains Barnes.

She’s currently championing the Food Safety Authority of Ireland to change the nomenclature of farm-raised salmon from ‘Salmo salar’, Atlantic salmon, or as Barnes refers to it, “my hero,” to ‘Salmo domesticus’, farmed Atlantic salmon. It’s an important distinction that seeks to celebrate the rare and extraordinary product that is genuine wild Atlantic salmon, once regarded in Ireland as the “king of fish.” “Someone is going to have to work for these fish and give them the spotlight they deserve,” she adds.

Barnes collects her salmon from a fifth-generation salmon fishing family, some of the country’s last, who fish on the 104-mile-long (167 kilometers) River Blackwater, about a two-hour drive northeast of her home. But the amount of salmon she purchases from them has been steadily declining over the years. To offset this issue, Barnes offers educational courses and events with fellow producers and chefs out of a wooden shack she built in 2019 adjacent to her smokery and home.

Called the Keep, a nod to the importance of maintaining ancient preservation methods, the simple yet cozy space is lined with wooden tables, benches cushioned with sheep wool, and unglazed windows offering views of a sea of green hills.

Here, guests can take part in filleting, smoking, tasting, and coastal foraging courses, all designed to deepen their knowledge of preserving wild and natural ingredients. “I’m making the few bits of raw material shelf-stable, allowing me to give a greater number of people access to experience fish as it should be.”

Her coastal foraging classes, for example, take guests to wade in whirlpools and forage for edible ingredients at the water line—including chanterelle mushrooms, sea radish, shellfish, and seaweed—which are then made into a meal and eaten. “I’m encouraging people to become more aware of what’s edible in their front door, to try to make themselves a bit more self-sufficient and less reliant on running to the supermarket for your food.”

Barnes is currently in the process of consolidating her nearly five decades of experience into a book. It’s one more way to provide curious minds with access to her wealth of knowledge.

“We are treasuring and trying to protect Indigenous people and their ways of growing, harvesting, and cultivating their food,” she says. “I am a pensioner, [but I’m] not ready to lay down my gloves just yet with so much experience which I feel a need to share.”

While the future of her business when it comes to working with wild fish stocks is always in flux, Barnes isn’t ready to give up anytime soon. Just like the Atlantic salmon, swimming against the current has defined the majority of her life—and that’s what she knows best.

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