TALES FROM THE RIVERBANK I find this truly alarming. It is a reminder of
the task facing organisations such as the Atlan- tic Salmon Trust, with its international SALSEA programme which highlights
the problems Fishy figures
The number of fish caught last year looks good until you scratch the surface and the real truth emerges
WORDS JON GIBB
last of their autumn harvest before finishing up at the end of the month, for the rest of us it is time to take stock of the season past. While we will all have our own impressions
N
of the season based on our personal fishing fortunes, it will not be until this time next year, when the Scottish Government releases the official Salmon Fishery Statistics of every fishery in the country, that we will truly be able to assess the overall health of salmon numbers returning to the Scottish coastline in 2012. In the meantime, I’ve spent the last few nights
by the fire poring over the recently published set of figures for 2011. My family may have long given me up as a hopelessly sad case, but I find these a treasure trove of fascinating insights. The headline figure for 2011 draws the eye
immediately: the total reported rod catch of salmon last year by Scottish anglers was 87,915, the sixth highest figure since reporting began in 1952. Much as we should be encouraged by this figure, read on further in the report and you start to see why this might be. Bear in mind too that 13,800 salmon were also caught by nets in 2011, the sixth lowest figure on record. Compare this with previous decades. Back
in the 1970s, upwards of 250,000 salmon and grilse were trapped by Scottish coastal nets. Meanwhile, the rod catch on rivers was no higher than it is currently. The inference is obvious. There is a missing ‘black hole’ of nearly a quarter of a million Scottish fish when compared with former times. In other words, the population of salmon returning to the coast is around one third of what it used to be.
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ovember is a month of reflection for most Scottish salmon fishermen. While the Tweed and Solway anglers reap the
‘The number of salmon caught in 2011 was the sixth highest since 1952’
of feeding at sea, particularly in the warming sectors of the North Atlantic where the salmon spend their early months foraging for prey. It seems that many fish are simply not making it through their first marine winter as their prey species have moved further north as a result of global warming. On a much brighter note, however, it is
hugely encouraging to see that anglers are doing their part to preserve the spawning fish that do remain in these stricken times. In 2011 73% of the annual rod catch was returned unharmed to the water (a mighty impressive 91% of spring salmon were released). Compare this to ten years ago when two out of every three fish went for the pot. Twenty years ago nothing was spared the ‘priest’. This modern-day
response by responsi-
ble Scottish anglers could currently be the single greatest factor protecting the future of the species. Without such a high catch-and- release rate, it does now seem likely that many rivers in the country would fail to reach their minimum spawning targets – and if the avail- able freshwater spawning gravels are not filled, decline swiftly follows and localised extinction becomes a very real possibility. But although anglers are to be commended,
there is one problem with releasing such a large proportion of the catch: any fish that is
released can of course be caught again.
Indeed, many believe that, due to higher corti- sol levels, a released fish is more likely to be recaptured than a fish that has never been hooked. On some systems the recapture rate can be very high indeed – the management of the River Orchy in Argyll estimated last year that one third of its rod-caught fish had been caught before. Obviously the danger here is that, without knowing the rate of recapture, using the rod catch to estimate the number of fish present can give a wildly over-exaggerated impression of the health of the stock. But finally, the official sea trout statistics for
2011 should come as no surprise to anyone, least of all those in Edinburgh responsible for protecting our inland waters. The results from the West Coast, with its patchwork of indented sea lochs and numerous fish-farm cages, are the fourth worst since 1952. But just round the coast on the Pentland Firth (where, inciden- tally, there is a presumption by the Scottish Government against fish-farm installations), the sea trout results were the best ever in the 60-year time series. Can anyone see the link? It seems the Scottish Government can’t.
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