Finavon Castle Bulletin

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

A surprise fish in bright sunshine

We were surprised and delighted when our New Zealand visitor, Roger Findlay from Christchurch, caught and returned a small salmon (possibly an early grilse) in the head stream of Tyndals. The fish was caught in briiliant sunshine in the middle of the day with only 4″ on the SEPA level guage at Gella Bridge. Roger’s catch ensured that we did not have our first blank week since late March and brought the FCW salmon catch to 20 for the 2012 season to date. Well done Roger!

View from the Haughs Aqueduct and good numbers of salmon and sea trout in the top FCW pools

An advantage of having the Haughs pipe bridge, which we call the ‘Aqueduct’, crossing the river at the head of Haughs Pool is that it is easy to see fish lying in the head stream of the pool. A small shoal of rather small sea trout is currently positioned just below the aqueduct and there are some salmon lying further back in the pool, some of which are showing signs of disease. There are also good numbers of fish in Red Brae and Tyndals. Fish have also been seen in Indies (See Derek’s report below) and in the main pools of Bogardo Beat downstream at Tollmuir and Marcus House Pools. The gathering of fish in the stream into Tyndals is particularly impressive, with a few sea trout in amongst the salmon.

Derek reported:

“While wading over the tail of Indies after talking to you I noticed a stone creating quite a wake in the fast water.  I went to kick it over while passing and got within 3 Metres of it when it shot upstream and arced around me back down into Martins Cut. I burst out laughing as it came up past me again and put a deep vee well up Indies as it went- a lovely salmon. I caught none but saw half a dozen fish for an hour, so they’re there!”

This is Tollmuir Pool from the right bank in summer conditions. This is one of FCW’s deeper pools, with the main dub about 12′ 0″ and a beautiful 25 yard stream into the pool and a long hourglass shaped glide out of it. Where the ‘waist’ is pinched is the main lie in high water. This is a special pool, close to the old toll gate on the main road north, but it is generally under fished because of the effort required to cross the island known as ‘Merrinwood’ in order to fish the pool effectively from the right bank. You could spend a whole night on this pool at sea trout time!

Report on the MSS radio-tagging project.

16 salmon were tagged last week, which brings the total number of tagged fish since February to 141. We are now just 9 fish short of the 150 target to 31 May. An impressive achievement by our dedicated team of scientists.

3 new fish have been reported, one in the South Esk and 2 in the North Esk. There are no reports of new fish in either Dee or Tay.

There has been some movement in the South Esk, with fish now up to Justinhaugh and at least one fish at Finavon.

The MSS website should go live in the next few days

TA on 28 May 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

News from the radio tagging project is that there are three new fish recorded, one for the South Esk, one for the North Esk and one for the Tay.

The total fish tagged last week was 12, bringing the total tagged since February to 125, and the number subsequently recorded to 27 (21.6%).

Totals recorded for the 4 Rivers are:

South Esk: 17

North Esk: 6

Tay: 4

Dee: 0

There has been some movement of tagged salmon within the South Esk, with fish moving from Bridge of Dun upriver towards Brechin.

I think it is fair to suggest at this late stage in May that the spring run in 2012 appears to be less numerous than in 2011, but that the condition of these early running MSW salmon has been generally excellent. Therefore it may be reasonable to claim that some, perhaps even a majority, of spring salmon are getting access to good feeding at sea. The attrition of numbers of returning adult fish therefore is not simply a lack of food. There are clearly other factors at work, and it is on these unknown aspects of the salmon’s life that ocean pelagic surveys need to gather more data.

FCW caught and returned three more silver salmon (to 11lbs) last week, of which one was sea liced.

This sea liced salmon of 9lbs was caught and returned in Tyndals Pool (Milton Beat) on a bitterly cold evening on 19 May. In a year of rather disappointing numbers of salmon caught, the condition of this fish was normal for MSW salmon caught in the first three months of the season.

TA

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

Tagging of Dee salmon in the past has shown that only 30% or so of all fish tagged are later recorded, so we shouldn’t be surprised that to date the Usan radio-tagging project is showing a total of 24 fish recorded out of 113 tagged.

There is a little bit more news of the South Esk. Of the 16 salmon that have entered the river 6 have dropped below the Bridge of Dun receiver, leaving 10 in the river. Of these 10 salmon 2 are now upstream of the A90 bridge at Finavon, while the other 8 are hunkered down somewhere in the middle or lower river between the A90 and Bridge of Dun.

The 24 salmon recorded to date are:

South Esk 16 (6 dropped back to unknown positions downstream of Bridge of Dun)

North Esk 5

Tay 3

There are a number of interesting data emerging from the project.

1. Despite reasonable water levels only 20% of South Esk tagged fish have made any attempt to move upstream, which may surprise people used to thinking that early running salmon in the South Esk hightail it to the Glens!

2. It is unlikely that there have been technical problems with the transmitters, although we should be aware of that possibility.

3. Variations in the time spent in the sea between tagging and entry into one of the monitored rivers is 1 minimum to 31 days maximum.

4. The relationship between PFA (Pre Fishery Abundance, orthe number of returning fish arriving off the coast) and the number of fish entering the monitored rivers suggests that the PFA numbers may disperse elsewhere and to rivers beyond the range of the project’s monitored rivers.

5. It has been shown that drought and seasonal differences affect the proportion of tagged fish entering monitored rivers. In the case of tagging experiments on other rivers in October drought conditions it has been shown that numbers as low as 10% of the total number of tagged salmon have entered the rivers.

6. If we assume that the South Esk radio tagging project is likely to produce figures approximately the same as the 30% of salmon recorded entering the Dee after tagging – and perhaps as low as the 10% October figure in drought conditions – we should not be surprised at the results to date.

Salmon returning to our rivers run the gauntlet as they approach the European continental shelf. Fortunately our returning salmon do not travel in tightly-knit shoals, and are therefore less vulnerable to the highly organised predation by dolphins and porpoises on shoals, as seen in Sir David Attenborough’s Blue Planet.

7. Of course the big question is, “what has happened to the unaccounted 78.8% of radio-tagged salmon?” We should be careful to avoid too much speculation at this point, although it is inevitable that some of us will be thinking in terms of predation, poaching, and dispersal elsewhere. I think it is really important that try to avoid speculation, and let the data flow from the project and assess them scientifically at the end of Year 1.

Interesting isn’t it?

TA