We end the year 2019 on on a note  of either optimism or pessimism depending on how you view things.

Below is an article from the Times prompted by Graham Paskett, a P.R consultant and owner of Holme Lacy No 3 beat and member of WSA.
It sets out the situation on the Wye quite clearly though I think reference to the WSFOA should in fact refer to WSA ie  Wye Salmon Association who are demanding urgent and meaningful action to restore the Wye as a priority. 

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS INCLUDE;

‘WUF have reviewed WSA proposals and offered some ideas of their own for consideration.  This will be followed up quickly by WSA post next weekend. A meeting with WSA has been offered by EA with a senior executive to discuss WSA proposal and NRW are expected to draft their plans for consultation shortly’

The spokesman for NRW just about says it all really.  THEY WANT NOTHING TO DO WITH HATCHERIES AND SEEM TO WANT TO DEPEND ON REMOVING BARRIERS, (HAVE WE ANY SIGNIFICANT ONES LEFT) AND IMPROVING WATER QUALITY -WELL THERE'S A JOKE FOR YOU!!
20 years of similar exercises, millions spent, plus miles of river gardening/fencing have failed miserably and yet still WUF plough on regardless with NRW approval.  Wye has abundant spawning areas and needs no more to fulfill its egg deposition targets.  What it need s is salmon.   How much better off would a million salmon eggs have been in a hatchery than washed out from the Wye and tributaries during the prolonged high water to be lost forever. .  Any surviving fry will face massive Goosander and Cormorant damage never mind the resident brownies, pike etc.  As for any poaching protection that's no more, nor is any redd counting or meaningful monitoring of parr and smolts in particular.

Its time for action now.  Clear out the  WUF dead wood, its pathetic trustees who have overseen this mess and get NRW to face up to its responsibilities and back WSA who are at least trying to make a difference.

This has been a long time coming and many of us on the river pressed the warning bell years ago.
Now the powers that be will reap what they sow..

I stress that these are my own opinions and not necessarily that of the WSA.


TIMES ARTICLE

During the golden era of salmon fishing on the River Wye one man was able to catch 10,000 fish during the course of his career while sharply dressed in a three-piece suit and tie.

Robert Pashley, who fished the river between 1906 and 1951, caught up to 678 of the fish in a single year and became a renowned figure, but his feat would be impossible today.

Catches fell to an estimated 350 in 2019, the lowest figure since records began in 1941. Declining water quality and the removal of water from the river are blamed for diminishing salmon numbers.

The disastrous figure is part of a pattern throughout England and Wales, where salmon numbers fell sharply in 2018 in eight out of 11 monitored rivers

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One owner of a fishery on the Wye, which runs from Plynlimon in mid-Wales to the Severn estuary, warned that salmon could become extinct in the river unless action was taken to replenish the breeding population.

Graham Paskett, of the Wye Salmon Fishery Owners Association (WSFOA), said the figure for salmon rod catches represented the bottom of a 20-year decline. “The reality is that up until the 1970s the Wye was England’s premier salmon river,” he said. “Today we face the real prospect of their virtual extinction as the number of salmon in the river do not enable it to self-sustain as a viable breeding population.

“The reasons are manifold but primarily they are poor water quality, predation by fish-eating birds and water abstraction, all factors that are compounded by commercial fishing at sea.”

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Robert Pashley’s catch of 678 salmon in a year would now be impossible

The high point for rod catches since the Second World War was in 1967, with 7,864. Since the 1990s the figure has never been higher than 2,338 and fell to 506 in 2018.

A government report on salmon stocks published in March recorded sharp declines in catches in rivers across the country, including the Tamar in southwest England where stocks of adult salmon fell from 4,424 to 2,603.

Mr Paskett said the WSFOA had been banned from restocking the river by Natural Resources Wales, the quango that has managed the Wye since 2013.

“In 2015 they insisted that the juvenile salmon stocking programme run by the Wye Salmon Association, at no cost to the taxpayer, was closed down,” he said. “It is a fact that since then, salmon numbers in the river have plummeted.

“We believe that we have to do something positive to halt the decline and prevent salmon from becoming virtually extinct as a self-sustaining population within the river.

“A key element of this is for Natural Resources Wales to lift the ban on hatcheries and juvenile salmon stocking so that we can continue our programme of restocking using Wye broodstock.” He cited David Hudson, environment manager for the Environment Agency, as saying that “doing nothing is not an option

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Mr Paskett said that Natural Resources Wales wished to prevent restocking with the wrong strain of salmon, but that the concern was unfounded. “We only restock with fish born from those caught in the Wye,” he said.

A spokesman for the agency said: “There is a significant body of evidence that stocking is unsuccessful as a strategy, and hatcheries are damaging. A comprehensive review of scientific research from the UK and abroad found that hatchery-reared young salmon have a much lower survival rate than young wild fish, and can harm existing wild salmon populations.”

Ceri Davies, its executive director of evidence and policy, said it was better to concentrate on improving water quality and removing barriers to migration.

Mr Paskett predicted that under the current system “salmon will become extinct as a viable breeding population within a decade”.