With the fishing season finishing at the end of September, even given the cessation of the experimental fishing which had gone on over the past few seasons, it didn’t mean that all fishing had stopped. Ghillies and Bailiffs, throughout the month, continued fishing a number of beats in order to catch up some fish for hatchery brood-stock.

During the first few weeks, given good water levels for both rod and electro fishing this proved to be reasonably successful, with around 400 fish being caught throughout the catchment.   The latter two weeks however, proved a little more difficult.   With regard to the rod fishery, resident fish, which had previously seen nothing but flies, it would seem were delighted to see the change of menu, with lots of fish falling to baits such as Devon’s and spoons.   There are still some who feel such methods, even for brood-stock collection, should not be used, but, given that the other method is netting, then it would seem to me to be nothing but a means to an end.   It could also be argued that fish caught by rod and line, are natural “taking fish”, which could mean, these “takers” will produce offspring carrying the same “taking” genes, and if this is the case then those are what we are looking for in the fishery, the others, if they are non takers, quite frankly are of no benefit to us at all.
 
As I said earlier, these fish have come from throughout the whole catchment and are now being nurtured until they are stripped in two separate hatcheries, one at Tulchan, the other at Sandbank which is located some 7 miles up the Livet.   Interestingly, during electro fishing on upper tributaries such as the Feshie, a large number of fish were found to have already spawned, which in turn led to halt being called to fishing in those areas. 

All in all the collection of Brood-stock has been successful and I will keep readers informed of the progress later in the year.

As far as the fishing season itself, although all estates have still not submitted their returns, with regards to Salmon and Grilse, it looks like we will again break the 10,000 barrier, which keeps us in line with the long term average. 

Given the returns submitted, the number of Salmon and Grilse returned to the river by anglers rose again to a very respectable 72%, but even more encouraging was the figure for Sea Trout. 51%, in the eyes of some people may still not be enough, but given the fact that until this year, no restraint was being advised and everyone considered them “fair game”, it would seem to me that this represents a great start, a point from which we should only move forward.

As I write [early November] the river is in great shape for natural spawning, a slight rise in the level has meant fish will now have easy access to their desired spawning grounds, which, given the fair volume of fish in the river, will provide us with ample stocks for future years.

As a footnote to this, in the 18 and early 1900s it was common practice for estate staff to walk the river counting redds during spawning time, these counts provided valuable information as to the numbers of fish in a particular area.   To my knowledge, no such counts now take place, instead we rely on technology such as fish counters to do the job, the problem being, they, just like the human fish-counters, only ever show a trend. Could it be that if we did both, we may come up with a more accurate reading!! 

Ian Gordon
Speycaster