Salmon « Finavon Castle Bulletin

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May Day 2012

Tuesday, May 1st, 2012

These bulletin blogs represent news about Finavon and the South Esk, and my views as a riparian owner. They are not the views of any other organisation, nor are they designed to promote the interests of any individual or organisation other than Finavon Castle Water and factors affecting the fishery. Tony Andrews

1035 Bill Hay, a long-time fisherman at Finavon and friend of the late Cyril Butler (See November & December 2011 blogs on catches), started May with a 12lbs salmon, which had been in the river a while and appeared to be recvovering from head lesions, from Frank’s Stream (Indies Beat)

May Day Salmon 12lbs

1046 Eleven minutes later Derek had a 9lbs fish from Tyndals (Milton Beat) on a Willie Gunn.

This salmon was the first of two nine pounders that Derek caught in Tyndals on a bright and warm May morning. Both were caught on size 8 Willie Gunns (1″)

It is no coincidence that these fish were caught in the best conditions we have had for at least a week. The air temperature is up, the water clear and the level slowly dropping after the spate of Monday evening and, as I suspected despite rather negative signals from downriver, there are (fresh) fish in the river.

1131 Another 9lbs fresh fish from Tyndals (Milton Beat).

The fact that Derek caught an 18lbs sea-liced salmon and a 14lbs salmon at Kintrockat on Monday evening supports my view that fish have been running through the lower river, but have kept their heads down and therefore not been seen by fishers. I suppose the moral of the story is “Don’t believe what you haven’t seen”!

Late report after dark on 2 May. This evening I fished Tyndals Pool (Milton Beat) through as dusk was falling and a fresh salmon showed about 10 metres downstream of the ‘elbow’. I continued on down the pool as the bats started to fly and the colours seeped away from the foliage. Having fished down to the second south bank groyne I decided to wade quietly back to the top of the pool, and soon afterwards was covering the place where the salmon had shown. I could see the fall of the line and the splash of the fly against the fading light. The fly was swinging very nicely over the main lie just upstream of the big boulder in the centre of the stream, when the line drew away nicely, and after a few minutes of mayhem in the gathering gloom, I landed a silver salmon of about 11lbs. A lovely fish that swam off strongly into the night!

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Radio-tagging update

Monday, April 30th, 2012

As of last Friday 27/4 the Marine Scotland team of scientists based in Montrose had tagged 94 salmon caught in the Usan nets. It hasn’t been easy to catch, tag and release the target number of fish and it is to the credit and determination of Julian and his colleagues that they have kept up to their demanding target number. At the end of the first phase of the project they should have reached a total of 150 tagged fish.

Of those 94 fish tagged, 13 have entered the South Esk, of which 4 have dropped downstream of the Bridge of Dun receiver.

3 fish have entered the North Esk, of which 2 are now upstream of Logie and 1 fish entered the Tay after being tagged on 10/4 and recorded at Almondmouth on 15/4.

At this stage, so early in the project, it would be wrong to speculate on what these data are telling us. From the facts available I find it fascinating that, with 94 fish tagged and the project into its 12th week, only 17 (18%) fish have been recorded. Of the total number of fish tagged only 13.8% have entered the South Esk but only 9.6% have stayed in the river. With 1 fish in the Tay and three in the North Esk the project confirms that the Usan fishery is exploiting salmon (and presumably sea trout?) on a mixed stocks basis.

But the really interesting aspect of this for me is the number of fish that are still at sea, gone somewhere else or are dead (77 or 72.38%). We have already learnt from the project that salmon hang around in the sea for weeks sometimes, presumably in the coastal zone where they may be vulnerable to predation and poaching.

I didn’t attend the Board AGM but I was saddened to hear of the attitude of some participants to the work of the scientists. I hope that, as the data emerges and we start to understand more about the behaviour and destinations of our early running fish, these attitudes may change and people become more supportive of our scientists who, in my view, are doing a first rate job.

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A very wet & cold week

Saturday, April 28th, 2012

The last full week of April was very wet with a high and coloured river, and some salmon showing in the pools as they swam through the 4 beats of Finavon. I saw what I think may have been the first sea trout sighting of 2012 in the shape of a fresh fish of about 3lbs jump about 2′ clear of the water in the Willows. Two salmon were hooked and lost, and four caught and returned, of which the biggest was 15lbs. The picture below is of a 7lbs fish caught in Upper Boat Pool in a falling (but still high) river, tinged with peat and very cold.

7lbs salmon caught in Upper Boat Pool on 28 April 2012 in high water

I have said before in these blogs that, unlike the North Esk where there is a counter, no-one really knows how many spring salmon run the South Esk every year. People say that spring salmon stocks in the river are fragile, but the only evidence produced, when you ask them to substantiate their claim, is rod catches. Therefore estimates of abundance of spring salmon are largely speculation, and mostly unfounded at that!

The most experienced scientists and more enlightened managers recognise that rod catches can play a useful part in stock assessment, mainly to corroborate data from more reliable sources. I am told that, because there is no other way of assessing salmon and sea trout catches on the South Esk, rod catches will have to do. Now, I am not saying that the river’s spring salmon run is entirely healthy because, as everyone else should be admitting, I honestly don’t know whether it is or not, except on the basis of my own observations and those of my upstream neighbour at Inshewan.

With 10 spring salmon recorded at Finavon to date (28/4) and reasonable numbers of fresh fish showing in the river I can say that our catches are normal, but that doesn’t tell me much about the bigger picture. If we are dealing with fact, as opposed to speculation, we know that improvements to the Kinnaird dyke allow fish to access the upper river in nearly all temperatures and conditions. We may therefore assume that spring salmon will be able to disperse throughout the South Esk catchment much earlier in the season than in the past.

The result of this dispersal is that salmon are liable to be spread thinly thoughout the catchment, and many of these fish will be unavailable to anglers, whereas when they were trapped below the Kinnaird dyke obstruction in the low water temperatures of late winter and early spring, they were available in an unnaturally high density to the then heavy angling pressure on the Upper Kinnaird beat. Spring catch figures over the last 50 years (See bulletin blogs for details in December 2011, January and February 2012) for the South Esk show that all the dykes, but especially Kinnaird, had a profound effect on the movement of spring salmon. Many of us have noted in recent years that angling pressure has eased in the spring months, to the extent that, for example at Finavon, there are many days without rods and others with only one or two rods on an eight-rod stretch of the river.

If we deal in facts, which I prefer to do, we have noted that in 2012 the spring salmon caught and returned have all been in excellent condition. These fish have clearly had access to good feeding at sea and are entering the river with stores of fat to see them through the eight months or so until they spawn. The females are clearly in a condition to be carrying large, high quality ova, and on that depends the strength of the next generation of spring fish. It is also the reason why the current Marine Scotland radio-tagging project is so useful. When we know where these spring fish spawn, and where their progeny grow up as juveniles, we can target those areas to make sure that their specific habitats are optimal for young salmon. Then we must start measuring their abundance – counting them – which will open up a whole new debate in the district!

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Archive for the ‘Salmon’ Category

May Day 2012

Radio-tagging update

A very wet & cold week

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