Salmon Fishing - Does Every Picture Tell A Story?

[Wildfisher]

OK, I know next to nothing about salmon fishing, but looking  at this league table even I can see an obvious flaw - it seems to take  no account of rod-days, so  for that reason is it misleading?

For example - number 11 is the Don and 12 is the North Esk. Now like most I reckon the North Esk is a better salmon fishing prospect than the Don, but I know the Don and it  is much more heavily fished than the Esk, so the figures are bound to  be higher.  Or to put it another way - stop fishing altogether on The Naver and it won't appear in the league at all.

What do you make of that table?

http://www.salmonatlas.com/salmon-statistics/rodcatches-scotland.html

[Traditionalist]

These things are always flawed in some way or other, often very badly. There is no way to guarantee accurate returns, this depends on too many factors.

[Wildfisher]

I know there are some good Scottish based salmon fishers on here, it would be interesting  to see what they think.

[Fishtales]

That was an old table Fred.

This one is up to 2009

http://www.salmonatlas.com/salmon-statistics/scottish-salmon-catches.html

These tables are probably based on the returns each owner has to make each year so the rateable value can be set. I'm sure they are very accurate as far as that goes :roll:

[Traditionalist]

For a number of years I had the doubtful honour of compiling the returns for three rivers here.  Terrible job, and I always knew the resulting tables were wrong. Nothing to be done about it. One is obliged to accept what people write on their returns, when they bother to do so at all, and if they lie there is nothing you can do about that either. There is no accurate way to do it.

You can get the newest available data here;

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2012/09/5826/1

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/0039/00391722.pdf

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2012/09/5760/1

[Wildfisher]

These tables are probably based on the returns each owner has to make each year so the rateable value can be set. I'm sure they are very accurate as far as that goes :roll:

That's another variable. I was told by a local fishery owner <name withheld> that one syndicated beat <name withheld> on a local river <name withheld> always put in low returns to keep the levy / rates down.

[bibio1]

I think the top 4 are correct. The are heavily managed and the amount of personel on the river gives a good assessment on the rivers. Wheres the helmsdale? As for the rest well a complete lottery. The forth for instance is literaly a 200m stretch at the motorway that gets hammered and under reported. Quite a few rivers missing but in my view not a great source for dependable information.

Cheers

Paul

[Malcolm]

That's another variable. I was told by a local fishery owner <name withheld> that one syndicated beat <name withheld> on a local river <name withheld> always put in low returns to keep the levy / rates down.

I think this in particular is a big problem. I know a lot of our club members won't put in accurate return for this very reason. I've got mixed feelings about this - they say that an allownce is made for this but I fancy that the allownce is a lot lower that the real returns. Catch and release also bothers me for counting purposes, how many fish are twice caught. Earlier this year I put in a report on a salmon that I released. The same fish was caught the next morning by my fishing companion.

I know that on our river over half the salmon caught are caught between about 5 people - no exaggeration. I also know for a fact that these 5 people last year alone caught rather more that the total return for the river.

[Allan Crawford]

You could argue all day about judging rivers on catch returns, dont think any one denys that, its one piece of the puzzle and C&R does make a difference with fish being caught twice or more.
The Ness being one of the biggest systems was only 15th and after the past two seasons about to go off the bottom! Destroyed by hydro and dont think the Ness fishery board have done enough in the past. But with paying rods walking off the best beat Dochfour in the last two seasons maybe things might happen.

[Wildfisher]

I suppose  the most reliable way might  be look at the number of rods allowed per day vs returns for a particular beat rather than the whole river. Even that can't take inaccurate returns and C+R into account though. I suppose however that purely from a  fishing  point of view the fact that with C+R a fish may be caught many times does not matter. Each time it will be counted as a separate fish. That fish might be greatly weakened and  die, but C+R is  really more about  fishery management than conservation.