Tight Lines - Richard Donkin's fishing notes

Hard to swallow

2010-01-21T12:30:00.004Z

Some time ago, in this feature about Taimen fishing in Mongolia, I mentioned a fish that had been found, about 5ft in length, with a 3ft Taimen stuck in its mouth. While I had heard the story I did not know that there was a photograph of the fish until I found this just now. Scary!

A treasure trove for salmon fishers

2009-12-01T07:53:00.009Z

I have just made a note in my diary to pay a call on Colin Innes when I next get up to the Dee. We haven't yet met but Colin contacted me a little while back and pointed me to his website, feathersfliesandphantoms which I can only describe as a treasure trove for salmon fishers. I have added a link to the sidebar here headed: Vintage Dee flies.

Just now I'm looking at his section with photographs of Dee salmon huts. I have never met anyone who goes salmon fishing who has not developed an affinity with the fishing hut. There are good huts, there are so-so huts and there are classic huts.

My favourite is the main hut at Carlogie beat on the Dee. Another great hut featured here by Colin, is the one at Sluie. The fishing at Sluie is not so great because of the profile of the beat (the best pool fishes better from the other side of the river) but where better to ruminate over this discovery than in its very fine hut? Colin has photographed the old maps and pictures on its walls.

Another great feature of this site is Colin's catalogue of old fishing flies used on the Dee, Don and Deveron. Looking at these old flies reminds us that there is nothing new under the sun. I can almost guarantee that the new wonder fly you will read about in virtually every issue of Trout & Salmon magazine will have had some earlier manifestation on a big single hook, perhaps, or tied with slightly different materials.

I would feel confident fishing any Scottish river with this Akroyd fly. Colin not only gives us a profile of the maker but also includes step-by-step instructions if you want to make the fly yourself.

It doesn't take long to realise that Colin must have ploughed through a lot of old (and therefore out-of-copyright) material, and transferred the relevant stuff on to the site, with plates of flies, covers and illustrations from old catalogues and newspapers, plus many of his own photographs. It would take one huge book to include all this stuff but a web site is like a living organism that can be updated constantly.

Colin says he enjoys curling up in front of a fire with an old fishing book and a whisky. Today I guess you can do something similar with your lap top. I only wish we could make lap tops more like books with spongy leather exteriors. No doubt it will happen eventually.

For those who prefer books to web sites, however, Colin tells us he is gathering much of his work together in a forthcoming book. In the meantime we can scan through this marvellous library of fishing ephemera. All I can say, Colin, is thank you for sharing your research with fellow anglers in such an accessible format. Not everyone can get access to libraries and this work provides a valuable window in to salmon fishing's rich heritage.

Bid to fish - great beats in NASF auction

2009-11-27T12:01:00.005Z

The North Atlantic Salmon Fund is to hold its 2009 fund raising auction on Ebay from the 1-11 December. Postal bids can be accepted too.

Among the lots are: fishing for dorado in the north of Argentina or the big sea trout they get on the Rio Gallegos in the south. There is bone fishing in the Bahamas; salmon fishing on the Gaula and Laxselva in Norway, and on the Sela, Laxa i Kjos and Jokla in Iceland. In Scotland there is fishing on the Tweed plus top chalkstream fishing for trout.

There are also rods, reels and flies from the best known tackle manufacturers and clay pigeon shooting, and it is possible that extra rods may be available on some beats upon contact with the owners.

Fly cufflinks

2009-11-24T15:01:00.006Z

Let's face it, we never have enough fishing tackle, but we also know, deep down, that that's not true. The reality is that our bags and boxes are overflowing with stuff and if we're not careful we can spend too much valuable fishing time simply trying to work out what we should be fishing with today. Even that creates anxiety because when we start fishing we begin to worry about whether some other set up would have done better. This is not clever and definitely not relaxing which takes away some of the reason for fishing in the first place.

Then there's our nearest and dearest. They have long ago abandoned the idea of buying fishing tackle for Christmas or birthdays. You may get away with a book, but another rod? You must be joking.

But we like fishing so much that it would be good to have some kind of fishing present, something classy perhaps. What about these gold-plated fishing fly cufflinks made by James Hartley? At £125 a pair or £299 for three pairs, they're not out of the way for the man who has everything. You couldn't possibly buy them for yourself but why not get a friend to post a link to your loved one and wait for the results? Or if you are the loved one who simply refuses to buy yet another fishing reel, why not take a look? With a pair of these there would be no more excuses for staying in.

Salmon film

2009-10-20T21:58:00.002+01:00

The angler in this film is lucky to get away with a snag while he is playing a salmon. The underwater camera shows just how salmon respond to a fly. They seem to be tempted most when it is dangled just above them. Of course it's rarely so easy to find a group like this but the crystal clear Icelandic waters enables the fisherman to pinpoint his cast.

No waders? No problem!

2009-09-06T16:39:00.002+01:00

I thought I'd seen everything, but sight casting with a snorkel for tarpon is something else.

Salmon porn - live action

2009-09-04T15:46:00.005+01:00

When you're fishing don't you ever get the urge to get in among them? I've never been down in to a pool with a snorkel or diving gear but I'm told it can be fascinating. Perhaps the next best thing is watching a river through a camera, monitoring a pool constantly. You can do just that on this web site which has an above water angle that will show you if anyone turns up to fish here on the Suldaslaagen river in southern Norway.

Big salmon

Beware, you can end up spending a lot of time staring at these screens but you will see fish. The camera positioning is explained here. Do they catch big fish here? The answer can be found on this site, which not only has a picture of the pool, but also has a picture of a 28lb specimen caught here in 2008. I've never heard of salmon pornography, but if there was such a thing, this is the place to find it.

Helmsdale prices

2009-09-04T13:04:00.005+01:00

Those who like to mix their fishing with deer stalking might be interested in a package for two rods, inclusive with accommodation and ghillie that has just come up on the Helmsdale for September 14, price £7,100 (contact Ron Sutherland at enquiries@helmsdalecompany.com).

That's a bit out of my price bracket. Also, I'm not sure I want to mix the two. The stalking, however, should not be too demanding. I was driving down the Helmsdale valley at dusk just over a week ago and stopped the car when I noticed about half a dozen red deer stags in the gloom not more than 30 yards away from the road. I wound my window down and whistled and they looked back but didn't run.

I had been doing a bit of touring in the far north after fishing for a week on the Dee. With rods in the car I was wondering about the Helmsdale Association water but thought it was a bit unfair to pile fishing on fishing when my wife was keen to do other things.

Heading northwards we stopped in a lay-by on the A9 just north of Dornoch. There's a hill here called The Mound and I had been told how to get some reasonably priced salmon fishing nearby on the river Fleet. It was tempting to give it a try but one of the locals said the fish had not been taking in the previous week (just like it had been on the Dee) so I decided to give it a miss and we took a trip to spend the day on Orkney instead (where, incidentally, you can get some very good trout and sea trout fishing).

The flow from the Fleet is controlled by sluice gates where salmon and sea trout queue to pass. I was curious to know what restrictions, if any, there would be to fish the tidal bit immediately east of the gates but couldn't find out about this. I'm keen to know about the rights on river estuaries. Does anyone know how they work? The picture here was taken just west of the sluice gates at dusk. There's more information about the sluice gates here and if you read the last sentence you can see why I'm wondering about fishing rights.

We were late back from Orkney and, unwisely, drove west so that I could explore the Halladale and Helmsdale valleys. This would have been fine in daylight but the track was narrow and bleak during the late evening. The one hotel en route, called the Fosinard, said it had no rooms. This seemed odd as there were no cars in the car park and all the room keys were on their hooks. Perhaps it is simply closed for business.

I didn't get chance to call in the Helmsdale tackle shop but this is the place to find out everything you need to know about fishing in that area. A few doors down there is an excellent fish and chip shop called La Mirage. As the picture shows its decor is a little strange but the fish and chips are first rate.

Sunray Shadow

2009-08-26T13:34:00.006+01:00

The only fly that had much success for me on the Dee last week was the sunray shadow. I'm not sure why the fish weren't taking as they were the previous week. Many fish had moved through, leaving stubborn residents in the pool and it didn't help that the water level was up and down all week.

The sunray shadow fishes best with a riffled hitch and pulled across a lie so that it creates a wake on the surface. Often fish will wait until the fly reaches the end of its arc and "on the dangle" before striking. But on one occasion last week a salmon struck as soon as the fly hit the water.

Some people argue that this fly works best where the water surface is relatively unbroken but I find it works in a ripple too and I prefer it if there is a reasonable push of water too.

It can work well on resident fish as it can provoke them to strike where other flies will fail to do so. The fish pictured was a 10 lb resident that fell to the fly. The strike is always visible and dramatic so it's an exciting way to fish. I wouldn't fish this way all the time but neither would I be without a surface-fished wake fly in my box. It's an essential piece of salmon-fishing kit and works for sea trout too.

Grilse on the Oykel

2009-08-01T18:41:00.006+01:00

Water conditions were perfect for Andrew Pindar's party on the River Oykel this year. But, for some reason, the fish were not running in the numbers that anglers have come to expect on this first class spate river.

The midges were out in force too, particularly on the highest of the Lower Oykel beats above the bridge. I love this beat with its short pools below the falls. To one side of the falls we witnessed one of the wonders of nature as thousands of young eels made their way up a wet sloping rock on their migration to the upper waters, all the way from the Sargasso Sea where they were born.

It was quite a big party and there was plenty of rod sharing but I found I could get in some early morning and late evening sessions. One early morning stint brought me two fresh run grisle, one from a long cast and the other from a long retrieve in quite slow water. Another came late in the evening after sneaking off from dinner on my last chance to fish above the falls.

I hadn't reckoned on the clouds of midges that were so thick they caught at the back of the throat. It was pretty miserable but I knew there was a fish to catch on the lip of the pool. It rose on my first cast, finned again after a quick change of fly, then took a third change of fly but shot off over the lip in to the next pool down where I couldn't follow.

A bigger fish might have been tough to get back but this one - about 5 lbs came back up over the small fall quite steadily. Almost everyone caught a fish and one or two were kept so we had salmon on the table one evening. Even in these days where catch and release predominates it's still good to eat your catch now and again, particularly on a river which can claim healthy stocks of fish.

So why were the numbers lower than expected? There was a rumour of Russian trawlers with big nets taking salmon out at sea but I don't know its veracity. We saw one of the local nesting pairs of ospreys had produced a chick but only one of the other pair had returned this year and it did not stay. We watched the active nest long enough to see an Osprey returning with a good sized fish, possibly a sea trout.

Gill had a nice fish on the last day. I had not been on my best behaviour, giving her a hard time over her casting and fishing a bit too intensively occasionally - certainly not relaxed about it - but this morning I left her to it on a nice run and sat in the car watching her cast. The Spey cast that brought her fish was perfection itself. I saw the take and came over to net it for her and she played it really well.

We reached double figures for the party in the week but it could have easily been twice that had the fish been taking better. There were a lot of pulls that never converted to takes.

Much is written on fly types and sizes but I think a variety of sizes of just three types is enough for most summer fishing in Scotland: stoat's tail and silver, Ally's shrimp and the Cascade. If I was to add anything it would be a plastic tube to fish riffle-hitched on the surface (as you would fish a sunray shadow) and maybe an Irish shrimp and something black or dark bodied. The rest of them - and believe me I have them all in my boxes - are really window dressing, sitting there as "try outs". That said it was one of these try outs - a variation of the stoat's tail that caught my fish above the bridge. When I looked at the fly next morning it was probably the tattiest specimen in the box,but there you go.

Blue Marlin in Madeira

2009-08-01T11:50:00.012+01:00

Just back from three days in Madeira, fishing for specimen blue marlin. I'd never been out before apart from a short trip in Antigua)so was not too optimistic, given that you can go days without a bite in this kind of fishing.

As a fly fisher I had always assumed that the real skill in this kind of fishing belonged to the boatmen and that's true; but it's a real team affair and the one in the chair has to do his part too. It's easy to fluff things taking the rod to the chair and, when the people around you are working so hard for your enjoyment,you need to listen to what they're saying.

In the event we didn't have to wait long, the boat was barely out of Funchal when a dorado snatched at the furthest lure. There was a bit of a commotion but it didn't seize the big squid-like artificial bait which is a bit big for these fish.

But the commotion was obviously enough to interest something else as barely 30 seconds later I could see a fin moving up on one of the starboard lures. I don't have the combination of letters to describe the boatman's scream. There was a lunge and the fish dropped back but Nick Bayntun, who runs the back of the boat, was already working the lure and when the fish came again he let loose the drag momentarily, popping the bait in to its face and I could see it all, the take, the turn, the run, everything.

My task was to lift the rod out of its side-holster and position it in the seating in front of the chair, while settling myself and clipping the seat chains on to the reel. Then up with the feet on to the board and ready to go, all as the fish is running out. When all this is happening it's as if time has slowed down as your senses capture every detail of the moment.

The line was dipping down about 20 yards behind the boat, so it was surprising to see the fish break the surface some 200 yards behind the boat. Then it was pumping and winding, but not pumping the handle. You don't hold the rod at all, just work the chair with your body, winding with the right hand and guiding the line with your left hand on the spool. Meanwhile the skipper is making life easier by reversing the boat.

It didn't take too long, maybe 15 to 20 minutes to bring a beautiful blue marlin (pictured above)to the boat. How big? The skipper thought 400lb. Nick thought maybe 350lb. Naturally I went with the skipper! Oh, the joy of catch and release!

Ten yards from the boat the action wasn't over. A fish like this isn't caught until someone has touched the leader or "grabbed the wire". You need to be really careful grabbing that wire as Stewart Campbell, one of the world's most experienced marlin fishers discovered here.

Those last few yards had the boys on deck sweating a bit but they held on and she was ours. What a beautiful fish she was too and very healthy, quickly released to grow, hopefully, in to one of those "granders", the 1000lb+ blue marlin for which Madeira is famed. How did I know she was female? All the blue marlins caught here are female.

There was so much of the day ahead and we felt optimistic for another as I handed over the chair to my host, Jonathan Fletcher, part of the Blandy Madeira family, and owner of the boat, Balancal. But it wasn't to be. We saw fin back whales, we saw dolphins, we even saw a huge leatherback turtle, and what a sight that was, but no more takes.

Mission accomplished, we dropped plans for a second day out but I had the chance to go along with a second boat where an 11-year-old boy, Curtis de Silva, was trying to capture the "small fry" IGFA Blue Marlin record that today stands at 448lb. The day I caught my fish he had lost one in the 800lb class. It helps that his dad, an experienced Trinidadian skipper "Frothy" de Silva, is at the helm.

Frothy pulled the baits three times through surface-feeding big eyed tuna, but didn't get a bite. The conditions looked great with plenty of mackerel shoals (or bait balls) near the surface, showing up on the fish-finder, but the bites weren't coming. As we made for the harbour in calm water at the end of the day I was staring down in to the depths from the platform and saw what I thought was a dolphin just ahead of the boat. But no, there was the bill and the fin. We were moving up on a cruising blue marlin. With a kick of its tail it was gone before I could take a picture, but that image of this most majestic of fish at one with its environment will stay with me for the rest of my life.

It was real privilege to meet some of the world's best known big game fishers and skippers - people like James Roberts, Peter Bristow and Anibal Fernandes. Bristow probably has more 1000lb+ black marlin to his name than any other skipper, once coming across a shoal of maybe 50 fish north of Cairns in the 1990s. "We got among them and hooked 30 fish, caught 20 that day. I've never seen anything like it before or since," he says. Watch out for my full report on this in a forthcoming (October 2009) issue of The Field.

Repairing waders

2009-04-21T12:28:00.003+01:00

I have yet to graduate to a pair of Simms waders, relying as I do on my much cheaper Snowbees that seem to handling the wear and tear of heavy use just fine. But this Simms video has some good tips on repairing the pin holes in waders you can get from hooks and thorn bushes.

Hogging lies

2009-04-20T11:14:00.006+01:00

Can ghillies hand out too much information to anglers? I heard a ghillie on the opposite bank last week pointing out the "hot spots" to his rods. This, you may argue, is exactly what a ghillie or guide is paid to do.

But anyone who has fished a beat for many years will know that while some stretches of river perform better than others, catches are by no means restricted to the best known lies. Besides, the performance of different pools varies depending on the water height.

The problem with giving out information in this way is that it can encourage anglers to believe that the hot spots are the only places where they can catch fish. The result is that they begin to hog the favoured lies which really does them no favours since the lies are flogged with cast after unproductive cast.

I saw this happening all too frequently among a party of anglers fishing the opposite bank to me on the Dee last week.

One angler did not move more than 30 or 40 yards in a morning and plastered a promising taking spot with dozens of poor casts.

He would shape up his line with a reasonably executed roll cast before launching a longer spey cast. The roll cast would have been quite sufficient since the fish were lying close to his bank. But the spey cast failed almost every time because it could not turn over his fly which landed on the water in a crumpled mess.

I didn't feel too frustrated, fishing the opposite bank, since there was plenty more water to fish, but it makes for poor angling etiquette when people do not move purposefully through a pool.

The ghillies on our beat have tried to open up new pools in order to give anglers more variety and to relieve the pressure on popular taking places. While these can hardly be described as favoured pools, they are spots where fish are occasionally taken and sometimes it's better to visit a neglected pool than one that is being overfished.

One morning I arrived at a pool before the "flogger" and, fishing the sparsest of flies on a size eight hook, had a nice fish that seized the fly almost immediately after it hit the water. I was fishing a floating line on a long cast and the take was almost summer-like, quite unlike those you often have to search out at depth during the spring.

The floating line was doing well on the Dee last week although, when in a taking mood, the fish were not too choosy about the depth. Our flogging friend saw me catch the fish and took up residence in the spot for the rest of the day until leaving at about 6 pm.

I was fishing further down stream when a friend turned up to suggest we went off to the pub. But sometimes there are evenings when you just know there is going to be a fish. It just feels right.

So I suggested he had a few casts over Lucky Hole (the lie where I had had the fish in the morning and that had been covered all day long from the other side). He went for his rod and three casts later he was in to a fish that, unfortunately, was lost at the net. This fish took a weighted Monkey pattern fished on an intermediate line. So much for all the science over line depth and fly type.

Was the ghillie right to urge his anglers to concentrate on favoured places? These lies produced fish, after all. I think he should have advised his rods to fish down the whole length of the pool with maybe one or two extra casts over the most promising lie. Fairness demands that all the anglers should have a chance in the known lies. Everyone's chances are improved this way because fish are unlikely to rise to a series of duff casts in the same spot. A pool need not be rested too long but it does benefit from a rest.

The lies were all close to the far bank yet some anglers would insist on wading them when a short cast from their bank was quite sufficient without disturbing the fish. What is this urge to wade? I would far rather stand on a bank than plunge waist deep in to the limb-numbing water of a spring salmon river.

I noticed that none of the fish we caught last week was held in the scissors, suggesting that they came up from behind rather than turning on the fly. All three of my fish were the softest takes and two of them were quite lightly hooked, but they all came to the net without much trouble.

One of the fish had been mauled around the flanks by either an otter or a seal. There were a pair of claw marks on one side and some exposed flesh on the other. Will it survive until spawning? Well it has the chance (the Dee runs a catch and release policy), but I would have preferred to have knocked it on the head and would have debated the option had the ghillie been present.

Instead I made sure it never came out of the water; nor was it handled. It didn't seem to have been weakened much by its ordeal so I'd like to think that its wounds will mend.

NB. I'm not sure of the name of my fly and can't recall how I came by it. It's very similar to a Silver Wilkinson or a Logie. The main hairs are yellow, blue and red over a silver shank with a red band holding a wisp of yellow hair at the rear. It's a good hooking fly because, unlike flies with long tails, there is nothing for the fish to grab other than the hook.

I caught my other fish on a Black Frances - an excellent spring fly but one which sometimes produces a strong pull rather than a take as a fish grabs at the whiskers trailing from the shank. With this fly I had a 4:1 pull-to-take ratio whereas each take on the Silver Wilkinson (or whatever it is) produced a fish. If you happen to know the name of the fly (pictured) please let me know.

Wild Trout Trust auction

2009-04-06T14:04:00.004+01:00

There are just two days to go before the end of the Wild Trout Trust annual online auction. I haven't looked at all the items but the £460 bid for membership of the Salisbury and District Angling Club has reminded me to post off my membership subs.

The Sage TCX salmon rod looks as if it might have a bit more to run with a bid of £410 at the time of writing. With 200 donated lots, the auction has something for everyone although I notice that no-one has yet bid for the ploughing lesson.

Tay kelt

2009-04-06T13:24:00.003+01:00

Yes, that's all I had to show for six days on the Tay with just two spring salmon among six rods. It was disheartening to see just the odd fish running in such great spring conditions with a falling river and settled conditions.

The six days of casting practice, I suppose, will come in handy for the Dee in a week's time. The Dee figures seem to have picked up a little last week while the Tweed's again were poor.

The opposite banks are fished separately on the Dee so I was surprised to see that the left bank Kincardine beat had 10 fish while the right bank Carlogie beat had nothing. It's the same stretch of water, after all.

There were some great hatches of March browns for the trout fishers and plenty of trout about. That's good news for the World Fly Fishing Championships (trout and grayling)to be held partly on the some of the lower Tay beats in June.

Coelacanth site

2009-03-27T20:24:00.002Z

Everything you need to know about coelacanth.

Tweed kelt

2009-02-17T10:32:00.007Z

I sneaked away for a couple of days on the Tweed at the end of last week but had nothing to show for it. The tattiest kelt took my lure but there didn't seem to be many fresh fish coming through. Still a kelt will do just fine for some.

All the same, it was beautiful sunny weather on Friday, wading the river below the bridge in the aptly named town of Coldstream. It's why people go winter fishing.

I was fishing the lower Tweed Lennel beat that is owned by a fishing syndicate. The original syndicate bought it for about £38,000 nearly 40 years ago. A 24th share was sold last year for £160,000, valuing the beat today at more than £3.8m, a multiple of 100 during the lifetime of the syndicate. So it hasn't been a bad little investment.

The syndicate members divide their time so they have two days a month on the river. That's fine for people living in the north but it's a heck of a drag from the south for just two days.

There is another opinion, however, as my fishing companion pointed out, that anyone who has to run a business can take a couple of days without it interfering too much with their work. Another advantage of the system is that people get the chance to fish the river in all weathers, when the fish are running in numbers in October and when they are not in....er, February.

Being a Borders river it's easy to insult your Scottish-sounding ghillie by calling him a Scot when it turns out he was born in England. Equally I got it wrong with another ghillie who I thought must be English. "Och no," he said. "I'm six miles Scottish and my wife's a hundred yards English." These things matter.

Angling - the work of Sisyphus

2009-02-02T00:51:00.003Z

I was just looking something up on my website and came across this note I wrote on ghillies, ageism and fishing. It's in my work section but I thought that fellow anglers might be able to relate to the Sisyphus analogy. David, the ghillie, incidentally is still going strong, working on another beat.

Taking the pulse of anglers

2009-01-27T22:35:00.004Z

I had a long chat with a fellow angler this afternoon where he suggested that people with lower pulse rates were potentially better fly anglers than those with faster pulse rates.

The theory goes that the high-pulsed anglers will be more excitable and more prone to the kind of impetuous behaviour that simply doesn't catch fish.

I wonder if anyone has ever done a study on this, or has researched whether fishing in most circumstances is the type of past time that lowers your heart rate? I say "most circumstances" as I can think of one or two where the heart really starts racing. An interesting idea nonetheless.

Gripping squid

2009-01-15T14:51:00.002Z

As a child I remember being gripped, reading Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, when the Nautilus is seized by a giant squid. But I never thought I would see something like that for real.

Fishing Girl

2009-01-04T12:36:00.004Z

It's freezing out there, your waders are wet and you've run out of the right kind of dubbing for your flies. You're fed up with yet another magazine article on Czech nymphing and you just don't fancy opening a book or watching one more casting video. What can you do?

Well you could play Fishing Girl. This is a little more sophisticated than Salmon Survival but you can practice your online casting and catch a few fish. Beware the bigger fish are like tarpon and just run off with your lure - as if that's never happened before!

The tackle tarts may be tempted to accumulate bags full of lures but that can prove ruiningly expensive (just like real life then!). For those averse to killing big game there is a way to rescue the little boy (the aim of the game) without resorting to bombers (no, not those bombers).

Give beavers a chance

2009-01-02T16:25:00.004Z

A number of anglers have been getting in to a blather about the re-introduction of beavers in to Scotland. I have been surprised that so many so-called "celebrity anglers" who have lined-up in opposition to the move. Maybe they know things I don't.

I've come across European beavers in Norway. You don't see them during the day much but you certainly hear them at night. Fishing in the gloom, late at night, when your senses are becoming stretched, the sudden loud gunshot-like slap of a beaver tail on the surface of the water is enough to startle you out of your waders.

Those opposed to their reintroduction say that beaver dams will clog up good spawning streams. I doubt that. Beavers and salmon have been living side-by-side for thousands of years. One thing I do know about nature is that animals have ways of complementing their separate behaviours.

Lions stalk the plains of Africa, feeding off old and young herbivores. the Lions fulfill an important role in the ecosystem. It may be that beavers help the ecosystem in providing stretches of deeper water.

Reading through some comments from Anglers in North America, writing on the LinkedIn website, there seems to be some consensus that trout often sit close to Beaver dams.

"I fish around beavers all the time and if anything I think they do improve habitat to a point, especially habitat for juvenile trout, by flooding brushy areas of stream-side vegetation. Occasionally, if there are too many beaver dams on a stream they can cause excess siltation by slowing the flow too much and dams need to be removed. Salmon are creative and can get through or over most beaver dams," says Jake Ricks, a member of Fly Anglers in Business on LinkedIn.

Skip Zimmerman, another member, says: "I see beavers in almost every stream where I fish. Most have not created dams, just lodges. I've only seen dams in head water areas or in smaller spring creeks, so can't think of a reason why salmon spawning would be too affected."

Of nine replies on the site, all from people with experience of fishing among beavers, there is scarcely any negative comment. Here in the UK change of any kind leads to a kind of irrational alarmism. I simply don't understand it.

I never saw such vocal protests against sheep grazing to the edges of burns that really did damage spawning habitat. Conservation efforts, such as fencing off the grazing land (now widespread, but still quite rare when I mentioned it here in this piece), have done much to restore depth to burns. Maybe beavers could help in the same way. I think we should give them a chance.

Anything goes on the Calder

2009-01-02T16:00:00.005Z

I hadn't been to Yorkshire over Christmas for two years so it was good to get some Grayling fishing on the River Calder near Sowerby Bridge during the break.

Drew Short, a good fishing friend, wanted to introduce me to the finer points of Czech nymphing. But we took along some maggots just in case.

This is an "anything goes" river, so while we were putting up our fly rods it was no surprise to see a couple of chaps with their spinning rods. Twenty years ago this stretch of water was exclusively course fishing but as it cleaned itself up over the years after industrial decline the river began to attract good stocks of trout and grayling.

The game fishing took a big hit two years ago when stocks were reduced in a pollution incident. The fish population is building again but there are too many small fish. A little while back you could catch grayling here up to 2 lbs, but not now.

I can't say I enjoyed the Czech nymphing - ledgering with a heavy nymph and an indicator on a short line - and the fish were scarce. So I swapped to a float, trotting maggots for an hour in the afternoon. I still like to see a float plunging under when a fish takes. You could say the same happens with the indicator but often you find you are simply catching the bottom.

The water was cold but I felt snug in my thermals and with a nice bit of pork pie, oxtail soup and Christmas cake for fuel, we had enough to get us through the day. I took some spare clothes too although didn't take a tumble this time. We didn't catch a lot of fish but it was better than pulling Christmas crackers.

Catch and release - or else!

2008-12-07T22:23:00.004Z

I know this has been around a long time but I still think it is a novel method of imposing catch and release.

And we all know how easy it is to lose a fish.

Finally, if you want to collect the set.

Restoring the Vosso

2008-12-05T12:26:00.006Z

What must be the most intensive and comprehensive salmon recovery programme on any river is to be launched on Norway's River Vosso.

The Norwegian Directorate of Nature Management has drawn up the rescue plan after a long-running study blamed the sustained failure of the river stock largely on salmon farming in fjords.

Stocks collapsed in 1988 and have not recovered although salmon are still present in the river due to escapes from farm pens and hatchery programmes. Vosso salmon genes are preserved in a live gene bank and the directorate plans to use its gene bank reserves, that can not be preserved indefinitely, to re-establish the pure Vosso strain.

The research looked at a series of possible contributory factors to the Vosso salmon's decline, including:

* Lowering of the Vosso lake (1989-1991).
* Road-building close to the river in the late 1980s.
* Acidification of water.
* Escaped farmed-fish spawning in the river (60 to 70 per cent of the catch in recent years has been escaped farm-fish).
* Sea-lice from fish-farms killing outward migrating smolt.
* The Evanger hydro-power station creating lower summer river temperatures and more acid water.

Of all these possible contributors, the report concluded that the most persistent overwhelming damage to stocks was caused by sea lice killing returning smolt and the escape of farmed salmon diluting what remained of the gene pool.

Earlier problems, such has acidity, have been resolved through better water quality. Fry survival from hatcheries in the upper river has been encouraging. But smolt still struggle to run the gauntlet of the salmon farms.

More recently conservationists have begun towing batches of smolt in special cages through the fjords, giving salmon farms a wide berth. Smolts are also being vaccinated against sea-lice attacks which research has shown is another significant aid to survival. Return rates have improved as a result.

Now the directorate is to consolidate the most successful initiatives in a programme that will re-introduced the Vosso gene. The programme has a two-pronged strategy aimed at both improving the quality and survival rates of Vosso salmon smolts and at lessening the damage caused by salmon farming.

Specifically the programme intends to:

* Establish production of 1.5 to 2m eggs a year in the gene-bank through increased breeding stock.
* Increase the capacity in the Vosso hatchery.
* Implant 1 to 2m "eyed ova" during wintertime.
* Release 200,000 to 400,000 one-summer fry.
* Establish a part of the upper river that has no natural run as a "living gene-bank".
* Release 100,000 to 200,000 smolt at different parts of the migration route, and with different treatment regimes against sea lice attacks.
* Establish a regime for marking all genetic material.

To limit sea lice attacks on smolt it intends to:

* Coordinate anti-sea lice treatments among all fish farmers.
* Control sea lice levels.
* Move some fish farms.
* Catch some of the smolt in river, and tow them out to sea (tests have shown this methods produces much higher return rates).

To limit escapes from fish farms it will pursue the following initiatives:

* Instigate better escape-prevention.
* Limit net fishing in fjords.
* Insist on the release of all wild fish (marked) and the culling of escaped fish.

It's good to see such a co-ordinated response. To succeed it will need the co-operation of powerful salmon farming interests with a view, perhaps, to a shrinkage or radical repositioning of salmon-farming in future. That commitment does not exist at present but if this initiative fails it could be the only answer. If the plan succeeds we may yet get the opportunity to fish for those magnificent Vosso salmon once more.

Material for this report was supplied to me by Riise Bjørn of Klæbu Sparebank in Norway who has been monitoring the Vosso programme for some time. He describes the Vosso as "a unique biological resource." I would second that.