Finavon Castle Bulletin

The 2010 season turned out average for salmon and slightly better than that for sea trout. The main features of the season were:

• An encouraging spring run of two-sea–winter salmon was spoiled by the drought in May and June. In May the Usan nets at the mouth of the river allegedly killed nearly 800 salmon. If 65% of these fish were of South Esk origin it is reasonable to claim that the spring run is not as fragile as we thought. But how reliable are the catch returns?  The photograph below shows a 15lbs salmon (returned) hooked in the Willows (Milton Beat)  in April 2010.

Nearing the end: a 15lbs spring salmon

• Sea trout abundance continues to improve. The 8lbs hen sea trout (below) caught by Derek Strachan in July in Haughs Pool on Bogardo Beat provides us with an indication of the quality of an individual survivor. This 9-year old fish had spawned 7 times and survived to return to the river in each of these years. Her spawning deposit in 2010, assuming she survived after being carefully released by Derek, should be about 5,000 eggs. These big egg-carriers are incredibly valuable for the future of our sea trout stock, and should always be returned to the river alive.

8 lbs sea trout from Finavon Castle Water

• The grilse appeared earlier than in recent seasons and provided increasingly good sport from mid July to the end of the season.

7lbs Fish Ready to be Released

• The closure of the netting season on the 31st August was the trigger for a huge run of autumn grilse and two sea winter salmon, some very big fish among them. Even on the last day of October we were still catching some sea liced fresh fish, including an absolutely pristine cock grilse of 7lbs. From early September to the end of the season all Finavon’s pools held fish. I have not seen such an excellent show of fish at all stages of readiness to spawn for many years. There is good reason to think that the South Esk’s autumn runs of salmon and grilse are in excellent condition.

Since the season ended there have been some sharp frosts and plenty of rain. Some days have revealed good amounts of snow on the higher hills in the upper catchment, but at this time of year, when the sun retains the vestiges of autumn warmth, the snow comes and goes off the south facing slopes. Later in the winter we depend on hard-packed snow and ice building up in the corries to give a glacier-melt effect into the spring, on which the spring salmon depend for their upstream migration.

Some of our regular visitors have asked me to show how the 4 beats and best pools performed during the season.

Milton Beat

50 salmon & 30 sea trout. Best pool Willows (18S & 19ST) and Volcano (9S & 4ST)

Castle Beat

28 salmon & 10 sea trout. Best pool Beeches (13S & 1 ST) and Red Brae (8S & 3ST)

Indies Beat

25 salmon & 37 sea trout. Best pool Indies (14S & 21ST) , Frank’s Stream (5S & 11ST) and Melgund (6S & 5ST)

Bogardo Beat

28 salmon and 32 sea trout. Best pool Marcus House Pool (11S & 16ST) and Haughs (11S & 13ST)

With a total catch of 136 salmon & grilse and 121 sea trout we really cannot complain, although it is worth noting that elsewhere 2010 catches were dramatically improved over recent years. For example, the Thurso had an all-time record of over 3,000 salmon and grilse, and nearer to home the Dee and the Kyle of Sutherland rivers did well. As I write this blog in mid November our 2011 spring run of salmon will still be feeding at sea waiting for the biological trigger to send them back home.

Where are they now? They could be off the Greenland coast, or in that fertile area of ocean to the west of Iceland, or just nearing the redds before spawning. Wherever they are, I wish them well as they start their inward migration that will impel them inexorably, past a gauntlet-run of predators, obstructions and lethal threats to their survival, back into the rivers of their birth. The fish that make it all the way back to the very tributary where they lay as fertilised ova in the gravelly bed of the upland burn, will I hope lay their own deposit of eggs (about 1,000 for very kilogram of body weight). And then most of them, exhausted and fringed with fungus growth and scars from their epic migration, will die. Their bodies will be washed down the river, some to catch in the branches of overhanging trees; others to be swept by floods into riverside meadows to decompose; others to provide food during the hard winter months for the birds and the fauna of the riverbank. All that rich nutrition from the plankton of the deep ocean is carried by these salmon, and their final legacy is to fertilise our land to prepare for the miracle of the forthcoming spring. As they say, “what goes around, comes around”. That is the fate of the Atlantic salmon, most awesome creature!

Spring salmon

Our spring salmon are mainly two-sea-winter fish averaging just under 10lbs. Local opinion has it that the South Esk springer is a slim-line fish, unlike some of the chunkier specimens you see in the North Esk. Looking at some photographs of salmon caught at Finavon between 1930 and 1965, I wonder whether local opinion is correct. I say this because during those years the river produced some very fine specimens; those fish were short and deep and in the high teens or early twenties of p0unds. I suspect that the shape of the fish as it returns to our river has more to do with the quality of feeding at sea than any other factor. Whatever their condition, the important thing is that these prime spring salmon continue to return to the South Esk, and we all can help that to happen by returning all salmon before the 31st May each season, until stocks improve to the point when that is no longer a necessity.

TA

Mid week in the last week of the season the river is in great ply with masses of cold clear water coming off the hills from regular top-ups from showers. Tonight, as I write this blog, with really heavy rain falling in the South Esk catchment, we could find ourselves with a brown spate in the morning. Today (27/10), despite a river full of leaves, tons and tons of them all being swept downstream to the sea, we did manage to catch three salmon on Milton Beat, with the Willows performing in its usual reliable way in high water.

Releasing a sealiced hen salmon

Charlie Palmer, after a frustrating three days without a fish, managed to catch a cock salmon of about 11lbs from the middle of Willows. With William Simper’s three salmon and a sea trout, and another fish of 6lbs from the N bank groyne immediately upstream of Volcano, the total at close on Wednesday was five salmon and a sea trout. The next three days will decide the season’s final catch returns. I expect to have a salmon total of about 130 fish and sea trout at about 120. In the circumstances, especially the nine-week drought that kicked off the 2010 season, this hasn’t been a bad year, but it could have been so much better.

The week ended quite well and brought the season’s totals to 136 salmon and grilse and 121 sea trout. Two beautiful fresh salmon were caught in the last three days including a 12lbs hen salmon from House Pool, as well as a good number of red and gravid salmon and some sea trout. Water levels were up and down and the salmon correspondingly fickle. Nevertheless the season ended on a positive note. I will write a review of the season in the next few days. In the meantime rods go onto their racks, reels oiled, waders patched and an assessment made of the flies that need tying to top up the storage box during the forthcoming winter. As I write this on the 31st of October there are skeins of 200 plus greylags and pink feet geese enjoying a sustained social gabble in the sky above my head. One thing is for certain: it’s a good year for geese! And not a bad year for salmon. Now for the spawning….

TA

The last week was typical of late October, with lots of fish in Finavon’s pools, of which about one in five was fresh. The total of ten fish for the week doesn’t sound bad, until you learn that eight of them were caught on Friday! Air temperature dropped and the first serious snow appeared on the high hills above the Angus Glens, but the water level dropped away, the frosts nipped the leaves off the trees, and the water assumed that wintry clarity that I feel makes it a bit of a lottery as to whether the fish will take: on the other hand, was it ever otherwise?. But then on Thursday the rain came in fitful showers and in sufficient quantities to raise the river level by about 9″. On the Armchair Rock, revealed by the new webcam, that means a healthy bulge of water around the sides of the rock, with the occasional splash over the top to wet the facing surface of the armchair, and plenty of stream between the rock and the North bank (the camera is looking west).

14lbs salmon from tail olf Indies (returned)

Friday was a good day following heavy overnight rain, with salmon ranging in size from 15lbs (Simon Walter) to a 7lbs beautiful sea-liced hen fish, duly returned (Ned Malleson). The only other fish caught during the week were one each day on Monday and Tuesday in difficult conditions and after a lot of hard fishing. And then Saturday should have been good, but the river was still rising and turgid when our flyfisherman started at 0900. Only a few fish were seen during the morning with the river still rising slightly. But in the afternoon the level began to fall and the wind dropped so that the minestrone effect of a river full of leaves subsided.  There were soon fish being seen everywhere, especially in Willows, Volcano, Lower Boat and Indies Pools. Simon Walter, fishing Lower Boat Pool, had a good long pull from a salmon, which stripped line off the reel before the fly came back to him. That was the extent of the action for a beautiful autumn day.

Next week is the last of the 2010 season. With 122 salmon and grilse and 177 sea trout caught in Finavon’s pools during 2010, it is fair to say that this is an average season. There are now plenty of salmon and sea trout in the river to spawn and start the freshwater part of the lives of the next generation of our migratory fish. Provided we don’t get another massive and damaging spate, it should be a good year for procreation – if you are a salmon that is! But with one more week to go, and the river holding its level nicely, perhaps we will have a few more fish to add to our total. If that is the case it will be a happy week for Charlie Palmer, William Simper and our loyal local rods.

During the winter I will be writing a series of blogs about the history of salmon and sea trout fishing at Finavon. I will include photographs and statistics taken from the records going all the way back to the 1880s. And of course I will be writing about the prospects for 2011 as the winter progresses and the guesses of eternal optimism turn into forecasts based on observation. The one thing we cannot predict with any certainty is how many fish will return from the sea into the South Esk. We don’t know because no-one is measuring the inward migrations, and the only data we are currently using is the fickle and unreliable rod catch statistics. Things can only get better (one hopes!).

TA