VANISHING SALMON
Michael Bruce’s letter [March 2016] poses the question ‘Why, despite widespread catch and release, do the stocks of migratory fish in our rivers continue to decline?’ His letter raises an interesting point drawn from the (early) research conducted by Canadian biologists into the potentially adverse effects of C&R on the fecundity of spawning adult salmon. Intriguing as his letter may be, I fear that it is likely to mislead as to the real causes of the sad decline of our migratory fish stocks.
The nub of the problem surely lies elsewhere. In the days of abundant salmon runs in the 1960s, young sea-going smolts returned as adult fish in numbers approaching 15% of the outgoing migration. This figure has been measured to show a steadily falling return rate over the following decades to as low as 5% and on some rivers the return rates of smolts has fallen even further.
Add to this the adverse effects of netting, pollution by fish farming (sea lice, environmental and gene pollution by escapees), predation by seals, dolphins, mergansers and other sawbills (which all now enjoy legal protection) not to mention climate change. While there is no doubt in my mind that Catch & Release is not a panacea to the struggle for survival facing our salmonids, I am equally confident that it is hardly the cause of the problem or anything like it.
As a life-long passionate salmon angler, I would love to see Scotland’s rivers once again full of salmon and able to provide a sustainable harvest. The difference is, and would be, that I (and most of my generation I suspect) would not wish to kill every salmon I caught as was routine practice back in the day. It is a sad state of affairs however when the Scottish Government feels it necessary to create nanny state rules for fishermen when they were already returning upwards of 90% of all salmon caught on a voluntary basis. The Scottish Government, in my opinion, is skirting round the edges of the problem with its draft Wild Fisheries (Scotland) Bill and should be addressing some of the wider issues mentioned above. Jim Fisher, Pitlochry