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Floods of this magnitude in summer are becoming a more regular occurrence.

Fishery Records Tumble in 2008!

2008 will long be etched in our memories as
three long-standing all-time records were beaten this year.

August Catch
The first was the total catch for August which was 422 of which 209 were released.
 The record had stood since 1992 and was 377.

One Day Catch
The second was the total catch for one day, which we broke on September 13 when no less than 55 salmon were caught for the day – 26 of which were released alive. The previous best day was 52 in August, 1992.

First Ever Salmon Caught
The third was the number of anglers who caught their first salmon.
This was 61 which beat the previous best of 52 in 1998. 
The number of first salmon caught expressed as a %age of the total rod days for the season 
was also the highest ever recorded at 3.25, beating the previous record of 2.9 in 1992.
 

The highlight was probably the Van de Laar party from Holland
who had just one day fishing guided by Glenda Powell. 
None had ever salmon fished before and four of them had never even fished. Starting fishing at almost mid-day, every single one of them had
caught their first salmon by 3pm., two of them had caught two each & even
the driver who was chauffeuring them for the day had caught one as well!

Then there was Fay Voysey-Moore & her son James from Devon
who were here for a week in September. Neither had ever caught a salmon before,
though were quite experienced anglers. It was Fay’s dream to come to Ireland to catch a salmon. And she did – 11 fish to 12 pounds for Fay and 10 for James.
Her dream came true in style!

We can conclude from this:
- within the lottery that is spring fishing, catches appear to be holding their own.
  Our gut feeling would be that the spring run is improving slowly, but other factors such as   number of rods fishing and river conditions belie this fact.
- there is a continuing downward trend in number of fish caught in May & June.  Here again, number of anglers plays a very significant part.
  Decimation of the grilse run by the nets discouraged a large percentage of visiting anglers. Obviously, we are expecting a resurgence of grilse now the nets are gone -
  but with these fish being predominantly 1/1 (one river & one sea year), we will have to wait until 2010 for the progeny of the 2007 run to return.

Grilse and autumn fish
- It was blatantly obvious in 2008 that grilse run was even later, and in fact peaked at the end of August.  This helps to explain not only the good catch figures
  for August and September, but also the very poor ones for June, which was   when one would normally have expected these fish to run.
- Over time, there is a definite improvement in catches, especially in the latter part of the season. The 5YA & 10YA figures for August & September are growing steadily.
  However, this year, the majority of the fish caught in September were not autumn fish. Not withstanding the high water levels throughout the summer,
  we only started to see our fresh autumn run fish making an appearance in the lower beats on the last two days of the season.
  One angler on Beat 3 caught six sea-liced fish all on fly on the last day.

Obviously, catch statistics are affected by not only the number of  salmon returning to run the river, but also the rainfall & river height, plus of course the number of anglers actually fishing. In order to see the trends in recent years, here are a couple of tables of statistics.

Size of Fish

Table 3: Average Size of Fish by Month.

The above table shows that the average size of the fish in June & July increased even further in 2008 relative to 2007 and the averages for the previous years.
In August & September, it was still above the 5YA & 10YA up to 2006 when the nets still operated, but fell below the 2007 figures.
This was due the late grilse and autumn runs.
 

Weather and River Conditions
We thought that 2007 was a wet summer, but there was actually 54% more rain fell in 2008 compared with 2007. 

Table 4:  Summer Rainfall in mm for 2007/8

This obviously reflected even more in the river height.
 

Table 5: Average River Height in cms by Month for Recent years

During early summer & the backend, we can observe the following trends:
- Lower levels in April, May & June for the last 2 years.
- Very much higher levels in July, August & September this year.
- In 2007, the levels were higher than normal in July & August, but not to the same degree.

This explains why last year, we had such excellent results on the fly in August & September, as the river came down to a lovely fly height during this period.  Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case in 2008, as the water level was just too high at this time for good fly-fishing.

Table 6: Percentage of Fly-caught Fish by Month & Year

Whilst we had a high percentage of fly-caught fish in July 2008, this was definitely not the case in August and September, when fly-fishing was virtually impossible.

Table 7: Average River Height by Month in cms

This shows that the river level throughout the summer in 2008 was way above normal.
The figures for 2007 were not nearly so high, which explains the difference in the number of fly-caught fish.

The extremely prolonged wet period required a change in our thinking – we had to re-write the fishing handbook,
so to speak. Normally, we would say that fly-fishing was best below 0.65m on the gauge, and spinning best below about 0.80m on the gauge. At heights greater than 1.10-1.20m, we would have not considered it worthwhile going out,  as the water was just too damn high. 

 

The highly successful French Silver Bullet spinners

Fishing is a wonderful sport, and woe betide anyone  who thinks he knows it all!  Fortunately, we were not so dogmatic, and persisted fishing in what we would have thought previously were impossible conditions.  We were helped by having a new style spinner in stock  in our shop – the French-made Silver Bullet –  which fished superbly well in these high water conditions.  It was with a black & silver 22g one of these  with a very large blade that I hooked a huge fish  on August 13th. last.  I had refilled my spinning reel with 19lb. nylon  just before leaving the Lodge, and fished our Beat No. 5  - Inchinleama – on the lower river.  In the early afternoon, I hooked a very large fish which  I played for 25 minutes before the spinner came out!  Four other anglers witnessed the event.  The fish was reckoned to be in the 20-30lb class.  That's fishing!

But what about the fly in high water – I hear you say?
Not quite such an easy proposition as  much of the river is best fly-fished by wading – which becomes next to impossible at gauge heights of 0.65m or more. 
We are however, looking to the future on this, and hope to be doing far more fishing with Shooting Head Lines,
which lend themselves much better to sunk line high water bank fishing.

Courses:
Glenda ran a course on Shooting heads last February with her fellow Loop No. 1 Pro Team colleague Thomas Bergren from Sweden with great success,
and they are planning a further two in the first week of February 2009. Contact the Lodge if you’d like to book a place.

Looking forward to 2009 and beyond……………………

The 2008 season started badly when we were given the news day before the 2008 season opened  that a spring quota and brown tag system
would be in operation up to May 12 on the Blackwater. This put off a lot of (Irish) anglers from taking out their licences in the spring.
The administration of the system blatantly didn’t work, and we are assured by the CEO of the Southern Board that it will not be in existence for 2009.

It’s about time that those in charge came to their senses, and made a change to our season.

If we genuinely wish to preserve spring salmon, the best way to do it is to delay the start of the season until March.
The bag limit per day also needs to be revised. The grilse running in June & July need to be conserved,
so a bag limit of one fish per day would make much more sense. 
With the bulk of the salmon now running in August and September, this would be the better time to allow a 3 fish per day limit.
Serious consideration should also be given to changing the season to allow us to fish on into October.
Many rivers in the UK close much later. The number of anglers who fish in October and November would help to provide a great economic boost
to an industry that has suffered greatly in the last eight years.
The Blackwater has superb late runs of fresh fish which could well be exploited – even if it was on a fly only and perhaps catch and release basis for a trial period.

But for now, the rods are stored away, and we can but sit and wait to see what the powers that be will have in store for us for the coming season.