Sea trout: 20
Ladder count: 4362
Largest salmon: 20lbs
Salmon News
2010 salmon review
The bare facts of the season’s catches read :
Salmon 103, grilse 42, seatrout 20. Of the 145 salmon and grilse caught 117 came to the fly and 28 to spinner. 13 fish were kept and 132 released giving an all beat C&R of 92%.Largest fish(2) were 20lbs, John Kane had one and Steve McGrandles the other and the first fresh fish fell to Russell Boyd on the 6th February, a powerful 16lbs fish off Lower Tummel. The actual largest fish caught was a 28lbs fish caught in early March but this fish was recorded as a rawner and I am sure we will see more of them when we start again on 15th January 2011. Without the recently acquired Pitlochry bank the totals would have looked very poor indeed but that isn’t the whole story. The runs of fish have actually been quite good, well up to the 5 year average, it’s the conditions which have caused problems. Long spells of summer low water in early spring and summer made our peak fishing time very difficult. When we might have expected daily catches in April and May the reality was that first run down might bring a fish then summer low water and bright sunlight would put them down for the day with Portnacraig bank suffering most as it generally suits higher water. As these conditions continued into May, and then June, angling effort fell away and we had the experience of peak days in mid May being virtually unfished. All the while the spring fish continued to run the ladder and onwards to the deep holes of the Garry and Tilt to lie up for the summer. First fish over was on 6th April, by the end of May 1000 were over, end of June 2000 and by season’s end around 4300.
The fly only experiment during April and May (for the Portnacraig Pitlochry beat) didn’t really get a fair trial due to the poor conditions but feedback from anglers suggests that it was favourably received and I hope we manage to carry it over into future seasons.
One unusual, and welcome, feature of the 2010 season has been the tremendous run of seatrout. From early June I had reports of anglers seeing smallish, silver fish splashing in the runs. No one was managing to catch one to identify what they were until Ken Scott got a 3lbs fish on the 8th June to confirm that seatrout were in fact running in some numbers. Heaviest recorded fish was 6lbs with a few at 5lbs and the rest 2/3lbs. Almost all were caught as by-catch by salmon anglers with very few people targeting these wonderful fish. We ended up with 20 reported but I suspect the number might have been much higher. The vast majority were returned.
So 2010 is over. Not a vintage year but as always when fishing for spring fish the chance of a really good, fresh fish is always there and there is no substitute for having your fly in the water. Those who are successful in the spring tend to fish hard when conditions suit. Thank you to all anglers who fished our waters this season and we look forward to seeing you again in 2011. Keep an eye on this news page where you will be kept up to date with developments and informed when the 2011 tickets are available. Thanks to you all, Innes(salmon sec)
