Salmon crisis calls for drastic action

The continuing decline in rod caught salmon may be another of those cyclical blips that occur over hundreds if not thousands of years. Maybe. But there is nothing to suggest things will improve. Catches so far this year are tragically hopeless. No one has a clue what to do.

So should we resort, again, to stocking – releasing smolts, the reared progeny of local wild fish, back into the rivers to bolster stocks and keep the visitors coming? For that has to be much of the raison d’être of fishing – keeping the tourists happy. No fish, no anglers. No anglers, no money. Angling is, or was, worth £60 million a year to the Scottish economy. But only if anyone is prepared to pay. And for what?

Things are so bad now that fishing owners are seriously wondering how long they can keep on ghillies and river-related staff at £30,000 a year including housing and vehicles.

To date, stocking has not been a great success in Scotland with the possible exception of the Carron. But no one has really dared to try stocking on the same ruthless scale as Iceland.

While we still hang on to the genetic purity of wild stocks, the Icelanders had no such problem. Their most successful rivers had been killed by volcanic ash so they simply stocked from scratch. At great expense it should be added.

People are now queuing up to pay £6,000 a week and more with luxurious accommodation, on the East and West Ranga. Not only can they catch fighting fish, the fish can be kept, unlike Scotland where most fish have to be put back.

True, Ranga fishing is essentially artificial. The fish cannot spawn on the volcanic ash river beds. Instead female fish are stripped of eggs which are grown on, released annually as smolts which then return from the sea as grown fish to be caught.

But that doesn’t stop anglers flocking to Iceland, its comfortable fishing lodges, landscape and guaranteed sport: the very things Scotland used to boast.

If salmon fishing is to survive Scottish owners and scientists may have to shrug off reservations about genetic purity of stocks if they want to keep the money coming in and maintain jobs.

We need an experimental river, big enough to have holding pools, which do not dry out to a puddle and on which owners, the local salmon board and Government agencies agree (pretty doubtful), to a major annual stocking regime.

The Carron is showing the way. Others need to follow, backed by a Scottish government in charge of tourism. Lot of “ifs” there. And there is no guarantee released fish will even return. But where is the alternative? n