Record year for Iceland's salmon

I had lunch at the Flyfishers’ Club in London today with Orri Vigfusson, who is over in the UK this week to raise funds at an annual auction for the North Atlantic Salmon Fund.

If Iceland’s economy is suffering, the same cannot be said for its Salmon fishing which can report another record breaking year, besting the previous record set in 2005 by some 25,000 fish.

The 2008 grand total for salmon caught on rod and line in Iceland is 82,000 (with one or two rivers still to report), a staggering increase on the 55,168 caught in 2005.

Why the big increase? Orri believes that much of the success can be put down to the end of netting at sea, achieved over the past 15 years in a succession of net buy-outs by the fund.

Monster salmon

Another reason, he suggests, is that the salmon are ranging more northerly where they could be finding good stocks of krill, sand eels and capelin. “We have had many more larger fish in the rivers this year,” he says.

The same seems to be true in Norway and anecdotally, at least, in Scottish rivers (Scotland takes somewhat longer to produce annual fishing returns). Norway’s river Alta, known for its big fish, had about 70 salmon weighing more than 40 lbs this year and 15 over 50lb. The Gaula meanwhile had 70 fish topping 35 lbs.

A monster salmon of 82½ lbs was caught in nets in the sea close to the Alta estuary. Imagine hooking that on your size 12 Ally’s shrimp with a 20 lb leader.

Fish ranching

These bigger fish are great news. But the improvements don’t end there. If you look more closely at the Icelandic returns you find that 30,000 of this year’s total were caught as a result of what Orri calls “ranching” but what most of us would know as river stocking.

Stocking policies on the East and West Ranga rivers have created salmon runs where none existed before. Salmon do not breed in these rivers naturally. Yet these two rivers alone accounted for more than 21,000 rod-caught salmon this year, more than two-thirds of the total caught as a result of stocking.

Survival rates are improving too on these rivers. In the past a 1 per cent return rate has been considered the norm from stocking but this year the return rate was 7.5 per cent.

Hatcheries closed

This would seem a powerful argument for maintaining hatcheries on rivers. On the River Dee in Scotland, however, hatcheries have been closed to divert conservation funds towards habitat improvement.

This seems a mistaken policy. Rivers such as the Dee need both stocking and habitat improvement to return their stocks to levels that could be classed as abundant.

Before we start to become complacent about these successes it’s worth noting that maintaining the net buyouts costs about £400,000 a year. In the last four years the NASF has raised between £700,000 and £800,000 annually enabling it to buy out more nets but the future is likely to be focused on maintaining the status quo.

While I hope that Orri Vigfusson maintains his considerable energy for many years to come, there will come a time when his specialist skills of negotiating with netsmen in the Faroe Islands, Greenland and elsewhere will need to be undertaken by others.

Future plans

It’s important now that salmon anglers and supporters of the fund begin to think about the legacy of this work. Orri says that in the next two or three years he wants to build a capital fund for the future. But it’s important too that the fund maintains its businesslike character and reputation for getting things done.

I’m not sure that any one individual will be able to replace his remarkable persistence in taking the NASF campaign to those who can make a difference. But the straightforward “capitalist solution” to conservation that he introduced has cut across the sometimes grindingly slow and ineffective lobbying of some conservation groups. Long may it continue.

New sedge fly guide

The Riverfly Partnership, working with the Field Studies Council, have produced an excellent guide to caddis flies, often described as sedges by fly anglers.

It's a glossy pamphlet with high quality pictures and detailed information that will easily fit in to a fishing bag or a large pocket.

Priced £3.50 plus £1 for postage and packing, it can be ordered here or at this number: 01743 852140.

Online fly casting lessons

I don't know about you, but I find I have to work on my fly casting constantly to help it improve. I didn't have lessons when I started and that's a pity because it meant I got in to some bad habits which still return from time to time.

On the other hand it has meant that I have had all kinds of advice from some of the best casters in the business. If you are just about to embark on fly fishing it might be best to get some tuition.

Even if you have been fishing a while it's worth checking out the experts from time to time to pick up a few refinements. If you can't afford lessons and don't have an experienced friend to help you you could do a lot worse than building your cast from this series of videos.

The most important thing on the cast is to take note of the forward and backward stops. You need to get both of them right. It took me a long time to build in the forward stop and even now I sometimes forget it when salmon casting. The point is made here in Eoin Fairgrieve's site, looking in this case at the Spey cast.

One problem of, course, in concentrating on your cast is that you can be focusing so much on doing long, perfect casts that you forget to fish. If you want to cover the fish that might be nearest to you it's important to start with short casts, sometimes standing well back from the bank.

It's a bloke thing, I suppose, to wade in as far as you dare, then launch great shooting casts across the river. Why? Because you can. You see this all the time in salmon fishing, less so among chalk stream fishers, stalking individual trout by sight.

If a salmon river is swollen after heavy rain, the likelihood is that the fish will be lying quite close in anyway. There will be no need for wading or for long casts. Yes, we all want to cast properly but first we have to think about the fish.

2007 - a bumper year for Scottish salmon

It seems hard to believe this but according to the Association of Salmon Fishery Boards, the total rod catch of salmon for 2007 was the third highest since consistent recording began in 1952.

Its annual statistical bulletin, Scottish Salmon and Sea Trout Catches, recorded 91,053 salmon caught by anglers in Scotland during the year, of which 55,472 (61 per cent)were released back into the water.

Only two years in the last half century have exceeded that figure - 1988 with 96,488 and 2004 with 92,918. The number of salmon and grilse killed on Scotland's rivers in the year fell to 65,468, of which 19,468, nearly a third, were killed by netsmen

The total reported Scottish catch of sea trout in 2007 was 27,115, compared with 28,824 in 2006. This breaks down to 5,574 killed by netsmen, 10,383 killed by anglers and 11,158 released by rods.

If you, like me, do some of your salmon fishing in the spring, you might be surprised by those figures. It didn't make for bumper catches on the Dee or the Tay - at least when I was there. I suspect that by far the the biggest catches have been recorded in the autumn.

Hugh Campbell Adamson, Chairman of the Association of Salmon Fishery Boards, described the number of salmon entering rivers as "fairly stable and on most rivers robust." He also said that there had been a "quantum leap" in the number of salmon caught and released.

But he said there remained concern over spring stocks, the erratic nature of grilse runs, and the continuing decline in sea trout catches.

If salmon stocks are stabilising I wonder if we are approaching the time when fishery boards could contemplate the tollerance of those anglers taking a week's fishing in the summer months having the option to take a fish of a certain size - say up to 7 lbs?

I remain uncomfortable about blanket catch and release for a game fish unless stocks were critical (in which case it's arguable we shouldn't fishing anyway) but would not want to see a return to the indiscriminate killing of the past.

As more anglers practice catch and release, so they are less likely to want to retain a fish but there are still those, particularly fishing in the last month of the season, intent on killing everything.

Those engaged in salmon conservation increasingly have an encouraging story to tell. It would be a shame if their efforts were undermined by a minority concern to knock everything that's landed on the head.


A 2007 trip to the Dee

Sunray Shadow

I've written a piece on my web site about fishing the Sunray Shadow on the River Dee. There are also some notes about landing fish. If you need an assistant, take my advice, be careful about asking your better half! Click on the link in the text if you wish to read more.
 
The picture here shows how it can be done as Andrew Pindar has a salmon netted by his wife, Caroline on the Oykel. All smiles and calmness.

August monsoon on the Dee

With two big spates in the same week, our trip to the Dee last week (August 2008) was wetter than usual. The fish didn't mind. They were taking advantage of the big flows and tearing up the river as fast as their fins could carry them. I think some of them were veterans of Rob's salmon survival game.

It made tactics interesting. Big fly or small fly? Floating line or intermediate? Sinking tip or no sinking tip? Start casting or have another cuppa in the hut?


The problem with sinking tips, to my mind, is that while they get down to fish that may be resting close to the bottom of the river, they are not crossing that wider cone of vision on the surface.

In the spring when the water is colder and the fish less willing to move far to a fly, the sunk lure is often essential. But in summer when running fish are moving quite close to the surface a sunk line could be fishing beneath them.

It doesn't help either when the water colours up in a spate. I change my flies and my approach too often - I know I do - but I do think you have to keep ringing the changes. It's a matter of degree and I need to be a little more patient, sticking with a fly for the length of a pool at least.

All the salmon I caught and hooked last week (OK we're talking three here) took a surface fly on a floating line (with a Maxima leader in preference fluorocarbon). The only fish I caught on an intermediate line were sea trout. I realise this is not statistically significant, nor is it typical.

My friends on the next beat were catching fish with a mixture of approaches although they too were often struggling in the conditions.

What this says, I think, is that there is no text book approach. Luck and persistence continue to play a big part.



End note: Gill's dad, Alan Barraclough who has been my fishing partner for the past 14 summers in Scotland, has decided his fishing days on the Dee are over. At the age of 82, wading was getting difficult. He isn't hanging up his rod altogether and plans to be fishing on the Tay again come the spring. I'll miss him and will always be grateful for the opportunity he gave me all those years ago to try my hand at salmon fishing.

Rodless fishing

No rod? No problem!