The River Clare () is a river in counties Mayo and

Galway Galway ( ; , ) is a City status in Ireland, city in (and the county town of) County Galway. It lies on the River Corrib between Lough Corrib and Galway Bay. It is the most populous settlement in the province of Connacht, the List of settleme ...

Ireland Ireland (, ; ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe. Geopolitically, the island is divided between the Republic of Ireland (officially Names of the Irish state, named Irelan ...

. The long river rises north of

Ballyhaunis Ballyhaunis () is a town in County Mayo, Ireland. It is at the crossroads of the N60 and N83 National secondary roads and on the railway line linking Dublin to Westport and Ballina. Ballyhaunis is within both the Roman Catholic and civil pa ...

in Mayo and descends past

Dunmore Dunmore from the or , meaning "great fort", may refer to: People * Dunmore (surname) * Earl of Dunmore, a title in the Peerage of Scotland, includes a list of earls * Countess of Dunmore (disambiguation), a list of wives of earls of Dunmore Pl ...

, where it flows west, then turns south past Milltown continuing down through Kilbennan Church near

Tuam Tuam (; , meaning 'mound' or 'burial-place') is a town in Ireland and the second-largest settlement in County Galway. It is west of the midland Region, Ireland, midlands of Ireland, about north of Galway city. The town is in a civil parishe ...

. It continues south until past Turloughmore, then turns sharply west, flowing north of Claregalway and, thence, further westward into Lough Corrib. The River Corrib flow from the lake into

Galway Bay Galway Bay ( Irish: ''Loch Lurgain'' or ''Cuan na Gaillimhe'') is a bay on the west coast of Ireland, between County Galway in the province of Connacht to the north and the Burren in County Clare in the province of Munster to the south; Galway ...

.''History of Claregalway''
, Joe O'Connell, 2007. claregalway.net. Retrieved: 2010-08-05 The Clare is the longest river in the Lough Corrib catchment. A large section of it is a former turlough (), which, at 6.5 square kilometres, used to be Ireland's largest. The Clare has since the 1950s been subject to ongoing

arterial drainage An artery () is a blood vessel in humans and most other animals that takes oxygenated blood away from the heart in the systemic circulation to one or more parts of the body. Exceptions that carry deoxygenated blood are the pulmonary arterie ...

to lower the bed of the river and mitigate flooding. This has resulted in the river being straightened and canalized between ramparts of dredge material making access to the river difficult and compromising its value as a public amenity. The river is an important spawning channel for

salmon Salmon (; : salmon) are any of several list of commercially important fish species, commercially important species of euryhaline ray-finned fish from the genera ''Salmo'' and ''Oncorhynchus'' of the family (biology), family Salmonidae, native ...

and

trout Trout (: trout) is a generic common name for numerous species of carnivorous freshwater ray-finned fishes belonging to the genera '' Oncorhynchus'', ''Salmo'' and ''Salvelinus'', all of which are members of the subfamily Salmoninae in the ...

and a noted

fishery Fishery can mean either the enterprise of raising or harvesting fish and other aquatic life or, more commonly, the site where such enterprise takes place ( a.k.a., fishing grounds). Commercial fisheries include wild fisheries and fish far ...

in its own right for both species.

References

Rivers of County Mayo Rivers of County Galway {{Ireland-river-stub