William Butler Yeats once wrote.....

The Herring are not in the tides as they were of old;
My sorrow for many a creak gave the creel in the cart
That carried the take to Sligo town to be sold;
When I was a boy with never a crack in my heart.


So it seems that fish have been in short supply for a while, if Mr Yeats was writing poetry about it seventy years ago......