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

Water conditions have been perfect over the last week and we have caught some nice two sea-winter salmon, with Andrew Bett catching and releasing a 17lbs fresh fish in Marcus House Pool. After the excitements of the previous week when Simon Walter lost two double figures salmon in Boat Pool and Tollmuir Pool (We think both were closer to 20lbs than 10lbs) we ended up on the last day of July with a respectable 45 salmon for the season to date. If we get water and fish the catches should rise quickly from now until the close of the season at the end of October. As far as sea trout are concerned we have had 79 for the season so far and there are no shoals of sea trout or fresh run fish to brighten things up. At the rate things are going I think we may struggle to reach our five-year average for sea trout this season.

As I write this update on 3 August the River is in excellent ply and big fish are running through but not in any great numbers. The grilse have not yet appeared but with more rain forecast I expect this to change in the next few days.

Gennady Zharkov, Chairman of Russian Salmon Fund, Fishing Red Brae Pool

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

It is great to see sea trout in the river in better numbers than for some years. Cortachy, about 6 miles upstream of Finavon, has been catching lots of sea trout, and every one of them of course passed through Finavon’s pools. But high water has meant that the big shoals have moved upriver. At Inshewan (3 miles upriver) Colin Gibb tells me that there are also good numbers of fish, both salmon and sea trout.

We are now awaiting the arrival of the grilse, hoping that the nets don’t take too many of them before good numbers can get upriver. We are still catching the odd salmon and, with a mid July total of 33 salmon and 64 sea trout we are ready to welcome in the summer and autumn salmon and grilse.

We were told by the BBC that this was going to be a long hot summer. So far it has  been a cool rather damp one. If the water continues to flow at a good level into August and September we can expect to see good numbers of fish. Here’s hoping!

Deep Wading Upper Boat Pool