A wake up call?
Atlantic Salmon on the way to the spawning grounds
In PART 2 I will go into more detail of why I “know” this to be the case, but also why, if managed properly, we don’t need the “fabled” tens of thousands of salmon to provide us with a decent salmon fishery. In fact, of the past 5 years, in all probability, as with many other big rivers, the Spey has had less than 10,000 fish in it. However, we’ve had some really nice fishing days
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in that period too. It’s all about managing expectation, facing up to and dealing with reality. The past 5 years has seen the number of fish in our rivers plummet to levels never seen since the Atlantic Salmon began to colonise and Drive Arctic Char out rivers and streams a few thousand years ago. I use the word colonise, because in fisheries, be it the ocean or our
Leaping Salmon in Perthshire waterfall
rivers, the success of one species, normally is at the expense of another. It will be interesting to see just how many pink salmon return to spawn in our rivers during 2019. In part two I will focus on counting salmon and reveal
what we found when counting fish in the river during low water this summer. I think many people are in for a shock! However, every problem has a solution. It’s simply a case of fully understanding the “Inriver” problems.