Angling from the archives
Monster salmon, emerging redds and novel methods for aging and weighing them. Taken from The Field, 21 October 1922
Reports taken from October 1922
THE GREAT TAY SALMON
Thanks to the kindness of Mr Alex P Lyle and of Messrs PD Malloch, we are able to give the photograph of Miss Ballantine and of her splendid 64lb salmon, whose capture was recorded in last week’s Field.
We are also able to show scales of the fish by which its age may be made out. They were not easy to read and the central part, as is not uncommon with scales of heavy autumn fish, was obscure, but the salmon had not spawned previously and it had, we should say, spent two years in fresh water as a parr, three in the sea, and would have been six years old in 1923. It was, therefore, somewhat younger than the 65-pounder also shown on this page.
Messrs Malloch informs us that Miss Ballantine, on the morning of the day that produced the 64-pounder, caught three others weighing 25lb, 21lb and 17lb. Four salmon in a day averaging nearly 32lb is an achievement to be proud of.
Apart from that, the young lady has not only beaten all records of feminine achievement with the salmon rod, Lady Haworth’s 58½-pounder from the Evanger in Norway, caught in 1911, was the premier fish hitherto, but seems also to have beaten all male records for the British Isles for more than a century. A 67-pounder killed on the Nith in 1812 by Jock Wallace is the last fish of which we have any note that passes the weight of her Tay monster.
FINE RIVER EARN SALMON CAUGHT BY A LADY
Excellent sport is being got on the River Earn, particularly on Dupplin Water, where the day’s catch has exceeded 10 fish on more than one occasion. A very fine male fish of 42lb was caught in the Kinnoull Pool on 14 October by the Hon Irene Dewar. It measured 48½in in length and 26½in in girth. It took a Jock Scott and fought for 50 minutes. PDM
THE LOCH OF TROUBLE
In your issue of 2 September last you published a short article from me entitled ‘A Loch of Trouble’. It may interest you to know that about the middle of September, five gentlemen from Forres were fishing on this loch, and while they were lunching on the Castle Island the boat drifted away with two of the party on board and was quickly blown to the far end of the loch. The wind was so strong that it was not only highly dangerous but absolutely impossible for them to row back and rescue their friends, so that they were marooned for a day and a night on the island. We appear to have been lucky in our experience of this ominous loch. WM
EARLY SPAWNING OF SALMON
In 3ft of water in a pool that I was wading on Saturday, I came across a newly excavated salmon redd. I reported this news to the bailiffs, who informed me that at two other places in the lower middle reaches of the Cumberland Derwent may be seen salmon on the redds. There have been a few records in recent years of salmon having begun to deposit their spawn in mid-october. That they should have thrown up redds in the pools proper is probably due to the fact that during the constant succession of spates that have favoured us the past two or three months, the water on the spawning ground proper was too heavy for them. We can only rejoice, of course, at the selection of the redds in places that will be covered with water, however low the river may fall during the winter. If these
early spawning salmon are the early running fish, an assumption that is not lightly to be doubted, then there is all the more reason for satisfaction. For on the Cumberland Derwent it is the early salmon that we want above all other migratory fish. BUCKHAM BROADS
FINE SPEY SALMON
We learn that Mr Percy Laming caught a salmon of 41½lb on the Spey at Delfur on 9 October. Mr Laming has a good many salmon-fishing achievements to his credit, among them a bag of 21 fish in a day from the Aboyne Castle Water of the Dee, all caught on small flies. We are not sure what the record salmon for the Spey is. Mr Augustus Grimble records a number of heavy fish in his Salmon Rivers of Scotland, the biggest being one of 53lb caught by Mr WG Craven in 1897. Lord Winterton had one of 50lb in 1892. Another notable fish is a 47-pounder caught more recently at Fochavers by Miss Phyllis Spender Clay at the age of 13. Mr Grimble mentions another heavy fish caught by a lady, Mrs Arthur Sassoon, a 42-pounder in 1897. At the date of publication of Mr Grimble’s book there were casts of nine fish over 40lb in the smoking room at Gordon Castle, the two 50-pounders being among them. There was also a 60-pounder, which had been caught in a net in 1894. So far as our notes go Mr Craven’s fish has not yet been surpassed by any other caught on the rod.
A BIG TYNE SALMON
The fish shown in this photograph [left] was caught by Mr AE Dickinson on the Styford water on the Tyne a fortnight ago, and it has given a definite illustration of the value of a formula by which a salmon’s weight can be deduced with fair accuracy from its dimensions. Its captor had no weighing machine capable of coping with such a fish, but came to the conclusion by tests with “a scale, with a revolving pointer, which completes the circuit for 10lb” that it weighed 30lb. “When we lifted the fish slowly up the pointer went round three times and then stopped. We presumed the fish weighed 30lb.”
Part of the salmon was then cooked and eaten, so an absolutely certain weighing became impossible; but Mr Dickinson became uneasy in his mind with a growing conviction that the fish probably weighed more than 30lb, and eventually he wrote to us. Fortunately the dimensions had been carefully taken – 46in in length and 26¼in in girth – so we were able to apply the formula communicated to The Field by Mr AJC Dowding in 1916, which has worked out very accurately in other cases. It is L + L x G² / 1000 = weight in pounds.
By this we have arrived at the figures of about 42½lb for Mr Dickinson’s fish. This is almost certainly not an over-estimate, for other fish of nearly similar dimensions have weighed more, viz, a Wye fish, 45¾in x 26in, which was 44¾lb, and an Avon fish, 46in x 25in, which was 45lb. Mr Dickinson is 6ft 2in in height, so the relative size of his capture can be gauged from that fact.
“THE YOUNG LADY HAS BEATEN ALL MALE RECORDS”