New Spey Hatchery Figures Make NRW and WUF look foolish?

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A second Wye fish has now been netted.   Lyn Cobley fishing at his beat at Ingeston saw a fish show and with his second cast of the season was into a fresh fish, no sea lice, of about 13lbs.  Fish was in great condition but appeared tired from running and took a single hooked flying C.   Conditions are still a little high there but obviously perfectly fishable.
Seems WUF are now reporting lost fish or even a brief contact. Brief contact with what?. A pike, a big trout, a chub -on what basis might this brief encounter have been a salmon.We shall never know.



Well we are off the mark at last with a fish caught where you might expect after all the water. Taken by a local angler who has fished this estate water for many years and used his local  knowledge to good effect.  A Mar Lodge (see below from my fly box)  is not something one would tend to

use these days but the upper river has a  history of fly fishing which the lower river, in the spring anyway, does not.  Flies in vogue when I fished the upper Wye first were the Black Doctor, Jock Scott, Yellow Torrish, and Silver Doctor but everyone had their own favourites.  The yellow Torrish always looked good to me.  I once saw an 18lb fish caught on a 9/0 Jock Scott.  Looked like a gaff hook in it's mouth.but it worked for Michael Robinson.
Many upper river anglers only fished the fly in those days and waited until conditions were right. Quality not numbers were the norm in those days -though the gillies often had to catch a fish on worm for a salmon for the boss to take home!!!
I feel sorry in some respects for visiting anglers who turn up and fish a beat 'blind' as it were with no idea of lies or tactics that work at different heights. Many parts of a beat will never hold a fish and much time is wasted by raking the whole lot with a flying C, this being the easiest option. With many fewer fish around its always going to be much of a lottery for many..

Still, where there is one, there are likely to be more so get out there.
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The below latest Spey report with up to date figures and explanations for an early poor showing of hatchery fish and which the NRW andWUF used so extensively in their recent hatchery conclusions sheds rather a different light on the subject.  In fact it takes away a lot of their arguement though of course the will find reasons to discredit it.  It's suggesting that twice as many fish returned than were being used for the experiment.  If you think about it if this happened to the wild fish very river would be knee deep in salmon in a few years time.  Not that its going to stop NRW of course, or stop the grins on WUF faces .  They seem to think they might get more money to hack down more trees if it's not spent on the hatchery.  Reckon they have spent enough in that area don't you?

New Spey Hatchery Figures Make NRW and WUF look foolish?

#1

Today, 11:05 AM

Latest from the Spey

Hatchery origin fish contribution to the Spey rod catch 2008 to 2012. The 2008 and 2009 figures had previously been published and presented at a number of meetings. The recent report shows that there was 0% contribution to the rod catch in 2010 but only 83 rod caught fish were sampled that year; too low a number given the relatively small contribution to the rod catch recorded in other years. In 2011 and 2012 the contribution to the hatchery fish contribution to the Spey rod catch increased slightly at 1.8 and 1.5% respectively. As discussed above the 2007 rod caught samples could only have included grilse from one year class of smolts, subsequent years would encompass a wider range of the spectrum of adult salmon age classes