keirstream
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Post by keirstream on Dec 11, 2010 11:51:41 GMT
I was a member of the Mucomer syndicate in the 80s. It was an awesome river at times easily confused with fishing for mackerel , both salmon and sea trout numbers and eagerness to please were amazing. Then there was an enormous escape of farmers into the river after which the returns of wild fish collapsed year on year to almost nonexistent within 5 years. Jon Gibb worked a minor miracle in revitalising the river but unfortunately has not been able to sustain it. Our party has regretfully decided not to return to our early september week next season and were immediately offered a late july week which we also rejected. Last season was the worst ever and although the surroundings remain outstanding we have collectively made a decision that our cash will be better spent elsewhere. Maybe Russia with Springer and Tony. ;D
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Post by kingfisher on Dec 11, 2010 14:30:11 GMT
I had a couple of weeks in the mid eighties and had one particular week of 23 to my own rod. Never forget that week. Now look at this and fill yer boots. www.riverlochy.co.uk/
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keirstream
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Post by keirstream on Dec 11, 2010 15:30:38 GMT
Working it out with some simple arithmetic tells me that some 2000 rod days were fished in 2010 on the rotating beats. Dont know what the uptake is on the Tailrace and Mucomir but thrse need to be added in also as the catches on those beats are included in the reported catch of 250 fish. In the 80s that would have been considered a reasonable week!!!! Anyhow given the above stats, you need to fish for 8-10 days to land 1 salmon. At around £100/rod day it means each fish costs between £800-£1000 to catch, excluding all other accomodation, food , drink and travel costs--------absolute nuts. Somebody please tell me my calcs are wrong---Im horrified myself just looking at them.
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Post by weefrankie on Dec 11, 2010 17:29:21 GMT
What is the cost to produce one fish, if it is from the smolt rearing,bearing in mind cost to raise a, man hours fuel vetrineary bills catch up negotiations with farms to raise other bodies,management costs, research everything that is in it You then send x amount to sea, For, Y a lesser amount to return, so the cost to raise all the additinal fish that have been predated or lost,would have to be divided by the amount that returned and that figure added on to each fish ie cost £100 for 100 smolts, (£1 per smolt) and ten return so each fish would then cost £11 Am i just slavering here and on the wrong track have wondered this for a long time,
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Post by stinger on Dec 11, 2010 20:47:45 GMT
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Post by builnacraig on Dec 11, 2010 20:54:02 GMT
Actual smolt production cost will be less than 50p but then you have all the other costs: salaries, depreciation, rent, so probably costing £1 each. The Lochy may be getting them effectively for free due to liaison with aquaculture but if they were paid for:
100 smolts = £100
1% marine survival = 1 adult = £100
15% exploitation = £666 per fish to the rod.
You can play around with these figures, marine survival may be 3% and exploitation may be 10% so £300 per fish to the rods.
Still quite a high proprtion of the potential income from angling.
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Post by underghillie on Dec 11, 2010 22:13:27 GMT
Maybe Russia with Springer and Tony. ;D Not funny
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keirstream
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Post by keirstream on Dec 11, 2010 22:58:05 GMT
Maybe Russia with Springer and Tony. ;D Not funny at least you wouldnt be allowed to stray from the party. ;D
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keirstream
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Post by keirstream on Dec 11, 2010 23:02:59 GMT
It just seems for the last 3 or 4 seasons, the more that is ploughed back into the river, the less return we are getting.Difficult but conscious decision to quit. My pal Ken isnt as vindictive as that. Remember he offered UG a dee baseball cap for the absolute bargain basement price of £100 I seem to recall
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Post by weefrankie on Dec 12, 2010 0:20:39 GMT
Of the 250 fish caught any ideas how many came from the smolt program,and how many were possible multi catch of the same fish. You hear that when a smolt program is instigated you have to identify and know the negative that is causing the problem what is the negative on the lochy Fish farms the dam has it restricted or incresed the river flow loss of habitat and what caused Escaped fish years ago mixing genetics Forestation, has it restricted or incresed the river flow anybody know the cause,or can enlighten us
I feel i have to put some cards on table here To be honest it interests me a lot, i used to fish a system that has instigated a smolt program ,but no longer do,and would love to get a lot more information but without the politics that get thrown about and the bun fighting Martin, moderators this might make an interesting conservation thread you could get people in fishery management, to give there view points and findings,goals and achievements
I have fished the lochy and loved it dream's of the waters and the scribe's of John Aashleigh Cooper,the scenery second to none Scratching head when for the first time heard the clinking and rumbling of rubble was looking for deer or rabbits on high banks but no it was water disturbing the pebbles at the bottom Caught some lovely browns,surprising thing looked under good few boulders and stones couldnt find any insect life. I have passed my contact details to one of the moderators and if anyone would like to give me more infoi would welcome this,would even love to go up to facility and learn more about the subject
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Post by salmonshrimp on Dec 12, 2010 10:28:52 GMT
Can a system be over populated and if so what long term effect does this have on the stock.
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Post by builnacraig on Dec 12, 2010 11:34:10 GMT
A natural system can't be overpopulated. Salmon are territorial so the density of juvenile fish is regulated by the habitat and availability of territories.
If the area is well populated, i.e. saturated with fry, the mortality rate in the first few months will be very high (+90%). If the same area next year experiences poor spawning, the fry numbers may be much lower, but the survival rate will be higher and you may end the summer with similar densities of parr going into the winter.
However if fry numbers are very low then there may not be enough to ensure that all the parr habitat is saturated - then production of smolts will decline.
At very low densities then survival of the fry can be high, and growth rates, but are they subject to the same weeding out process that occurs when there is an abundance of fry? Survival of the fittest is very important in ensuring the health of the population.
I think that high fry numbers is the optimum and that is what you get when a system is healthy with lots of spawning fish and good spawning conditions.
Of course you can have a system with a very healthy juvenile salmon population in the river but then something happens at sea to resulting in poor marine survival. In the case of the Lochy their problem is sealice infestation of the smolts when they enter the sea lochs. The Lochy enters the sea at the head of loch Linnhe and the smolts have to face a long journey down the loch, and the outer sea lochs, before they are clear of potentially high sealice numbers. By the time they get out into the open sea they may have picked up lethal numbers of lice and they die at sea. Poor sea survival results in a downward spiral in numbers of returning adults.
Eventually you don't have enough adults to populate the river with fry and the downward spiral continues.
So what do you do? You can try and increase freshwater production by hatcheries but they don't have the fitness of wild fish and marine survival rates are much poorer than wild smolts. Every fish whether wild or hatchery origin has to pass through the sealice zone. I know on the Lochy they are cage rearing smolts from wild fish stock and treating them with Slice (a sealice treatment) to try and enable them to pass the sealice zone but I haven't seen any results on how it went.
Then there is the impact of escaped farm fish breeding with the wild stock. You might end up with some big springers but it isn't good for the wild fish in the long run.
It is criminal what has happened on the Lochy and many other west coast rivers but if fish farming was to stop tomorrow they could recover quite quickly as the freshwater environment is still good. Providing of course that there are enough wild fish left to start the recovery process.
The wild fish in a river are precious. There must be enough spawning to maintain smolt production. When you have to rely on hatcheries then things are serious and results may not be as expected.
There is not one healthy salmon system in Scotland based on anything other than wild fish spawning and natural smolt production.
BnC
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Post by salmonshrimp on Dec 12, 2010 12:24:57 GMT
A natural system can't be overpopulated. Salmon are territorial so the density of juvenile fish is regulated by the habitat and availability of territories. If the area is well populated, i.e. saturated with fry, the mortality rate in the first few months will be very high (+90%). If the same area next year experiences poor spawning, the fry numbers may be much lower, but the survival rate will be higher and you may end the summer with similar densities of parr going into the winter. However if fry numbers are very low then there may not be enough to ensure that all the parr habitat is saturated - then production of smolts will decline. At very low densities then survival of the fry can be high, and growth rates, but are they subject to the same weeding out process that occurs when there is an abundance of fry? Survival of the fittest is very important in ensuring the health of the population. I think that high fry numbers is the optimum and that is what you get when a system is healthy with lots of spawning fish and good spawning conditions. Of course you can have a system with a very healthy juvenile salmon population in the river but then something happens at sea to resulting in poor marine survival. In the case of the Lochy their problem is sealice infestation of the smolts when they enter the sea lochs. The Lochy enters the sea at the head of loch Linnhe and the smolts have to face a long journey down the loch, and the outer sea lochs, before they are clear of potentially high sealice numbers. By the time they get out into the open sea they may have picked up lethal numbers of lice and they die at sea. Poor sea survival results in a downward spiral in numbers of returning adults. Eventually you don't have enough adults to populate the river with fry and the downward spiral continues. So what do you do? You can try and increase freshwater production by hatcheries but they don't have the fitness of wild fish and marine survival rates are much poorer than wild smolts. Every fish whether wild or hatchery origin has to pass through the sealice zone. I know on the Lochy they are cage rearing smolts from wild fish stock and treating them with Slice (a sealice treatment) to try and enable them to pass the sealice zone but I haven't seen any results on how it went. Then there is the impact of escaped farm fish breeding with the wild stock. You might end up with some big springers but it isn't good for the wild fish in the long run. It is criminal what has happened on the Lochy and many other west coast rivers but if fish farming was to stop tomorrow they could recover quite quickly as the freshwater environment is still good. Providing of course that there are enough wild fish left to start the recovery process. The wild fish in a river are precious. There must be enough spawning to maintain smolt production. When you have to rely on hatcheries then things are serious and results may not be as expected. There is not one healthy salmon system in Scotland based on anything other than wild fish spawning and natural smolt production. BnC Thanks for reply it's very intersting, I don't have an answer however I sometimes think that the pendulum swings too far. Mortality at sea is a separate issue. Using fry as an example it could easily apply to parr or smolts. If you have a +90% fry mortality rate the surviving 10% will be weak because they had a huge struggle to survive in the first instance. In other words the 10% that survive are off to a bad start in life. Could this have a detrimental effect on their survival as parr and then on their survival as smolts etc...
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keirstream
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Post by keirstream on Dec 12, 2010 12:41:39 GMT
Then there is the impact of escaped farm fish breeding with the wild stock. You might end up with some big springers but it isn't good for the wild fish in the long run. There is not one healthy salmon system in Scotland based on anything other than wild fish spawning and natural smolt production. BnC Cant disagree with anything you say, survival of the fittest is key in any widlife scenario. Interested in your theory of of big springers being created as some sort of Frankenstein unplanned experiment. Is there any proof of this having happened? The Lochy quite suddenly produced a fairly high percentage of 30lbs+ fish warranting a separate gallery page. Do you think they are hybrids? Also what do you mean on your last point? Do you think all our rivers now have a diluted gene pool? [/quote]
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Post by weefrankie on Dec 12, 2010 13:43:28 GMT
Brian thats great this thread is getting good and informative Could this mean in the long term if the rod nos dropped due to hatchery not keping catch levels satisfactory it would end up stopping What i always find hard to understand if sea lice and farms are the main culprits why support them. With there raising fish,you should give them nothing,i know the fishery could have totally collapsed,losing employment and revenue to stake holders within the area,makes me wonder if the smolt program is just prolonging this, now if the smolt program hadnt started would the same stakeholders have then had an out cry against the fish farms and lobied goverments to do something quicker. Do landowners that own fishings rent or lease land and facilities to the the farming companies, i know bit to bone but honest questions on my mind Now if a fish farm industry produce and help and give low costs are they not in the back ground silently admitting there is a problem that they have caused,and its a pr thing to keep major spotlight away from them I read in Norway the smolts are acclamatised and pulled out past fish cages in there cages by tug boat to open water to get safe passage All get lynched but as i said honest questions and thoughts on it all not accusations just my mind thinking it all out loud and as i say a moderator has my contacts if anyone wants to speak to me
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