When I was a girl, we’d catch 700 salmon a season on the river. Last year, we had four. This year? Two
Landowner Tuggy Delap remembers her childhood when more than 700 fish would be caught on the River Fyne.
Last year four were caught. This year, only two.
Two full-time workers used to be employed on the river and permits were sold for 17 weeks of the year with anglers often booking into holiday cottages on the estate.
All are gone and Mrs Delap fears her late husband Jonny’s dream that their grandchildren would catch their first salmon on the Fyne has gone too.
She said: “It’s been the worst year I can remember and I was born and brought up here and I’m now 70.
“This year we caught two and when I was a child we used to catch 700.
“It was always my husband’s ambition that his grandchildren would catch their first fish in the river and it’s just not going to happen.
“My little grandson is quite a keen fisherman and he’s caught a trout or two but he hasn’t caught a salmon. “They’re not there to be caught.” Mrs Delap blames the sharp decline around the Achadunan estate, near Cairndow, Argyll, on the nearby salmon farms and smolts becoming infected with deadly sea lice.
She added: “It’s crippled us, completely crippled us.
“The river used to employ two people and we used to let the fishing for 17 weeks in the summer.
“And now of course we have no fish and therefore no clients and we therefore don’t employ anybody, and that is really sad.
“We used to have holiday cottages which went with the fishing if you wanted it and they were let all summer too.
“I know that the fish farms employ a lot of people but what a price to the environment.
“What a thing to leave for the next generation. It’s horrendous. It’s just appalling.
“Last year it was terrible with lice. It’s terrible to see them like that.
“It is just so sad because we have done this in our generation.
“We have one of the prettiest rivers you could wish for but the only thing we wish for now is fish.”