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

The weather turned really foul today (16/9) and, as I write this, there’s a howling gale and heavy rain which has been building all day. Andrew Robertson and I fished both Milton and Bogardo Beats today. We saw plenty of fish but caught nothing, despite some hefty pulls from salmon in Bridge Pool and Marcus House Pool. Our impression, having observed fish splashing around on both beats, is that there are plenty of fish, especially in the Boat Pool. The river hasn’t started to rise yet, although it undoubtedly will later on, and conditions have been just about perfect with slightly tinged water still fining down after the spate we had earlier in the week. Salmon are still running, and there is a good percentage of fresh fish in all the pools, but, so typical of September, really hard to catch.

This is the head of Flats in a good September spate (13/9/2011). A place to catch a spring salmon or apply your best fieldcraft to winkle out a sea trout at dusk in low water. Flats is a nice variety feature of Milton Beat.

Earlier in the week we had some good fish to 12lbs, and I caught a coloured cock of about 9lbs in that perfect spot in Red Brae, just where the current deflects into the middle of the river at the end of the Wall. There really are few more alluring pools than Red Brae when the level of the river is lipping the lowest part of the Wall. Wading on fine gravel from the left bank (N) and casting your fly across into dark water under the Wall , and with the current drawing it steadily across the  pool that becomes clearer and shallower closer to the north bank, is a fine fly fishing experience. One thing I have always felt about this pool is that it holds salmon in nearly every month of the year. I always look for an early season fish there, and in the records are some lovely fish in the high teens of lbs caught in late February and March. It can be awesome in a spate (see photo with this blog). I remember a number of occasions when there was a shoal of fish in the lie at the end of the Wall and two or three were caught before it went quiet again. In the pools descriptions of this website I recognise the importance of the Red Brae, but also what an awkward and capricious pool it can be. Some would call it dour, but Red Brae can be generous, and catching a salmon in that totally peaceful place is pure magic!

This is Red Brae in this week’s spate. The main current rushes along the Wall and continues to erode the red brae itself. At this height the pool is nearly unfishable except for a patch of calmer water close the the left bank downstream of the end of the Wall.

So where are we with this strange fishing season? A summary of catches might describe it as “good spring salmon, very few grilse, consistent MSW salmon catches throughout, and a river with a massive stock by early September”. In terms of the weather one might say, “good early season levels, followed by a late spring drought and then incessant rain and fluctuating levels”. So what does this tell us? I think there is not much doubt that this has been a good year for MSW salmon, with some big fish among them. The condition of these fish has been generally good, with the early season salmon in quite exceptionally good condition. Later in the season some MSW salmon have been less well nourished but, in my inexpert view, nothing to worry about. There have, as I say, been few grilse, and some of them very small and a few pitifully thin.

This is the view looking upstream from Red Brae hut during this week’s spate. the pool in the foreground is Craigo Stream, which doesn’t fish at all in a spate, but it can be a fine low water cast.

As far as the South Esk sea trout are concerned I believe that high water levels prevented them shoaling in the pools, as they tend to do in a normal summer. For example, we never saw really big shoals of school sea trout averaging 2lbs 8oz in the main pools, although for a brief period there were groups of sea trout in Indies, Melgund, Haughs and Boat Pool/Willows. My guess, and that’s what it is, but at least it is based on regular observation, is that the sea trout stocks of the South Esk are healthy, sustainable, but certainly not in the upper range of historical abundance. Condition of individual sea trout has been generally excellent, indicating that the fish we saw had access to good feeding at sea. As far as the restraint that George Pullar has exercised in returning net caught sea trout (for a compensation payment) this will undoubtedly have helped maintain the stocks at a sustainable level. Conservation of sea trout has been widely supported by anglers returning fish alive to the river. One last point on sea trout is that September has seen a late flurry of catches at Kinnaird and Finavon. While these fish may have dropped downriver after the main run in June and July, I think it more likely that these are genuine late-running sea trout. That is a tendency which should help spread the spawning stock throughout the catchment, because many of these late sea trout may choose to spawn in the main stem of the river, for example, in the gravel of Willows and Indies Pools.

My apologies to FCW blog readers for the erratic posting in recent weeks. We have now solved the problem by updating the software.

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

We caught 8 salmon and 8 sea trout last week. The late flurry of sea trout catches is not unusual and these fish are in general well advanced in their readiness to spawn, which normally happens in October & November.

On Saturday, after a day and a night of rain, some of it torrential, the river came up and only started to drop away in the early hours of Sunday morning. That gave Moray time to fish Milton Beat in the late afternoon on Saturday, where he caught three sea trout and saw a pod of very big fresh salmon running through and rolling their backs above the surface of the water in Willows and Volcano. He estimated all four to be in the late teens or early twenties of lbs.

This is the sort of autumn salmon that was commonplace in the early decades of the twentieth century. The model of this 32 lbs salmon was made from carved wood by Mallochs of Perth. It was caught on the Cumberland Eden at Crosby in November 1903 by my great-grandfather, Edwin Hough. I have always imagined that the gene that made me a fisherman came from him! I hope that we may see the occasional fish like this one at Finavon in the next two or three years. Indications are that our MSW salmon that feed in the Greenland fjords are accessing an abundance of prey species that could give us some big fish, by which I mean 25lbs+.

The appearance of big MSW salmon confirms the predictions made by scientists that fish that feed in the productive, nutrient-rich waters of the Irminger and Labrador seas, could become larger. Numerical abundance is another matter because of the simple logic that the longer salmon remain at sea, fewer will return. The corollary unfortunately is that the one sea winter fish – grilse -do not travel as far as their MSW siblings and extended family members, and the feeding areas they use, mainly in the nutrient ‘patchy’ eastern Atlantic, fail to provide them with the food they need to achieve the condition of salmon using the western Atlantic feeding areas. I can’t help wondering how many of these half-starved grilse never make it back home, but, weakened by lack of food they are open to disease, predation and inability to meet the challenge of the long swim home. It doesn’t surprise me that those that do make it back – the survivors – often look like kelts, rather than well conditioned fish bound for the spawning redds.

Maybe someone will catch a ‘big fish’ at Finavon this autumn. Here’s hoping!

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

Yesterday the weather was fine at Finavon, but in the hills there must have been a downpour because at about 1900 the river rose by two and a half feet, and it was still rising as dusk fell. Salmon and grilse were splashing around all over the place, especially in Milton Beat’s Willows and Boat Pool. The water is rather peaty with blobs of foam from organic material washed out by the rain, but the water is surprisingly clean, despite what was obviously a pretty violent rain storm with resulting floating debris and leaves in the water.

Monday could be very interesting…

This photograph of a harbour seal in Willows on Milton Beat at Finavon was taken by Derek Strachan in October 2008. Willows Pool is about 12 miles from the high water mark at Dun. To get to Finavon this seal had to swim upstream and traverse two substantial dykes, one at Kinnaird and the other at Kintrockat. I am sure that seals do this regularly in their pusuit of the South Esk’s abundant autumn run of salmon, but this is the first time we have photographed one. I have mixed feelings about seeing this particular wild animal here. Part of me delights in seeing a wild sea mammal in our pools, while the fisherman in me reflects on the mayhem this predatory creature must have caused in the confines of this small river. On balance, with some reservations, I was pleased to see it. 2008 was a record year for catches of salmon at Finavon and, by all acounts, it was a good spawning year. I doubt this seal did irrevocable damage, but I wouldn’t want such visits repeated too often!

We had eight salmon and grilse and a sea trout during the day (3/9). The main feature of the day was the number of fish showing in all the main pools. You often hear the expression “the river was stuffed with fish”, usually in fishing hut banter at the end of the day. While I would baulk at that term, what can be said with a degree of certainty is that the South Esk has had a good year in terms of its spawning escapement (fish, mainly females, on their way to the gravels and cobbles of the upper river to make their redds and deposit their eggs). My friend Colin Gibb and I have observed this year’s runs of salmon and grilse in the South Esk in the context of our long experience of the River. We share over 80 years of experience of observing the river and agree that there have been good runs of salmon from March onwards., and that the spring run was possibly the best we have seen for many years.

Cock Sea Trout

The sea trout are a bit of an enigma because, as I have mentioned in earlier blogs, these fish had superb water to encourage them to run through the system into their spawning burns. My guess is that the bulk of the sea trout run was safely ensconced in these little tributaries by the third week in July. It is therefore not a year to lament the collapse of our sea trout stocks because they were mostly unavailable to the angler. The sea trout that have been caught (80 of them so far at FCW) have been in superb condition – veritable little suckling pigs some of them!