Salmon Survival Game

Rob Donkin, one of my sons, is enjoying his break from university but I have not been able to get him out fishing. Instead he is building computer games. So I was chatting to him about salmon migrations and how tough it was for the fish to get back up the river. How do they avoid all those anglers?

Inspired, he came up with this Salmon Survival game. Why not try it? It's easy to learn but not so easy to avoid those anglers and their fishing flies. My fish keep getting caught on the lower beats. The river narrows the further you get. I also notice that the most successful anglers are the ones that keep their flies moving in the water. Just like real life then.

Carping on

Looking at the magazine racks of WH Smith today I was struck, not for the first time, at the number of carp magazines. There was Carp World, Carp Talk,Total Carp, Advanced Carp Fishing, Carpology, Crafty Carper, Big Carp Magazine and UK Angling Times Carp.

The front covers of seven of these eight magazines featured a man holding up a big carp. The eighth magazine had two men, each holding up a big carp. I can imagine the monthly editorial picture desk meetings of these magazines:

Editor: "What do we have for the front cover this month?"

Picture editor: "You're going to like this one. It's a bloke holding a carp."

Editor: "Hmm... Anything else?"

Picture editor producing another picture of a man with a carp: "What about this one?"

Editor: "I can't help thinking it's rather similar."

Picture editor: "Totally different."

Editor: "How?"

Picture editor: "He's not wearing a hat."

Those carp editors need to be looking at the rest of the angling press for ideas. Pike and Predator, for example, featured a man holding a perch. The tench special of Course Fisherman had a man holding - yes you guessed it - a tench, while Boat Fish used a picture of a man holding a big turbot.

You have to feel sorry for Fly Fishing and Fly Tying magazine. I picked up a random cover from the pile besides my desk and there was the familiar format, a man dressed in fishing gear holding.....well I can't actually see, but I think it must be a fly.

Heavy metal, light response

One of the happier by-products of industrial decline in the UK has been the recovery of many of our most polluted rivers. The Tyne in Northumberland, the upper reaches of the Calder in Yorkshire, the river Don at Penistone and many more have benefited from the restoration of natural fish stocks.

The problem is that some of the historic threats still remain. Industrial properties - or their remains - continue to line the river banks in many places and pollution incidents still occur. An escape of cleaning fluid wrecked a stretch of the River Wandle last year. In that case the company involved, Thames Water, is heavily committed to restoration work.

But in another serious incident, this time on the River Derwent in Derbyshire, the subsequent interventions appear to have been woefully inadequate and inexcusably slow in happening.

The River Derwent, some 50 miles long,is the largest river in the Peak District, joining the River Trent just south of Derby.

In January 2007, a settlement lagoon owned by Glebe Mines burst, discharging large volumes of sediment into the Derwent via one of its tributaries, the Stoke Brook. The sediment was contaminated with mine tailings - fine waste material - which included arsenic, cadmium, lead and other metals.

Now dredging work has started on the riverbed in an attempt to get rid of the poisonous sediment after a scientific report, commissioned by the Anglers’ Conservation Association (ACA), found that heavy metals had begun to accumulate in the food chain in parts of the river.

The report found elevated lead levels in insects from the effected area leading to a risk that lead levels in fish could rise as a result. Over time, warns the ACA, the range of elevated metals could pose a threat to the ecosystem and to people who might eat contaminated fish. Concentrations of heavy metals are known to suppress the immune system in animals and humans.

The ACA says the Environment Agency responded inadequately with limited sampling after it had recognised the need to act swiftly.

The lagoon burst in January 2007 and EA fisheries officers were measuring sediment depths in early February. By March EA scientists were aware of "acute damage" to a significant stretch of the stream and recommended the removal of sediments. In June 2007 the EA said that removing the silt was likely to start within two weeks. That was over a year ago. In the interim further pollution has occurred. Only now has the work started.

The ACA has chartered what I can only describe as a classic story of bureaucratic delay when it was clear from the start what needed to be done: get the clean up underway and deal with the "who pays?" argument later. The Environment Agency should hang its head in shame. Anglers deserve better.

From Russia with just a touch of smugness

Here's a report I just received from Roxtons, providers of fishing and shooting holidays (at a price).

CHARLIE WHITE REPORTS FROM LOWER VARZUGA:

"We are now into the second week of the season and summer has started to arrive. Bright sunshine and warm temperatures are melting the remaining snow and ice and the water levels are rising. The water is currently 5 degrees C and warming all the time but sinking lines are the best choice at present - we may well be into sink tips and intermediates by next week.

Last week the ten rods at Lower Varzuga landed 279 fish with an excellent average size. The rods also caught a number of sea trout - something we sometimes experience in the early weeks. The first three days of this week Michael Evans and party have taken 142 fish, with Chris Davis taking his first salmon on a fly. Alex Fenton and John Millar have each had two fish of 16lbs and a number of fish above 12lbs.

Kitza opened this week with a very encouraging start. The ten rods who are all, bar one, new to the river had 108 mint fresh fish for their three days with four of the rods landing their first ever salmon. The fish have been mostly caught below camp but as the river warms up it will not be long before the fish are spread all over the beat.

Middle Varzuga's first week saw the ten rods landing 211 fish with many new rods to the beat. This week the eleven rods, the majority of who know the river exceptionally well, have so far taken 277 fish. With the number of fish running the river here at Lower, I expect Middle's numbers to be somewhat different by the end of the week!

The river is looking superb at the moment, my only caveat being that we might get a day or two of high dirty water later this week as the warm weather melts the last of the snow."


Well bully for you Charlie. I'm sure we'd all catch salmon if the rivers were teeming with them. Let's be clear about this: this is fishing for the well heeled. It is also fishing for those obsessed with catching fish.

Would I go? With averages of 36 fish per rod per week in the Kola peninsula, you bet your bottom dollar I would. But I'm not sure I would pay the £5,000 minimum I would need to fork out to get there and fish. I'm told the cooking and residential facilities are excellent these days - better than the old days when everything was a bit rough and ready. But it's still Russia and the scenery is desolate.

But you go for the fishing don't you? Well not entirely. I want more than that. I want scenery, I want to stand around a bit and check out my surroundings. I want to chew the fat with my chums and sometimes - horror of horrors - I want to sit down and do nothing. Yes that's called "not fishing."

But when you're bringing back your tally to share with your party you're in a numbers game my friends. There's pressure to fish - all of the time. It becomes obsessive, manic and just a little bit unhealthy.

Am I embittered that I have spent most of my lifetime flogging away for salmon in Scottish rivers for extremely thin returns while novice anglers are filling their boots on the Kola? Not in the slightest (cough!). Blank days maketh the angler, someone once said (yes you guessed, that's a little bit of my home-spun twaddle but I'll hold to it, nevertheless).

So is my envy at these catches as green as the sour grapes? Too right it is. I would love a trip to the Kola rivers, if only to know what it is to see Atlantic spring salmon running in such prodigious numbers. Would I swap that for my summer week on the River Dee? Never. You can buy great fishing with a flourish of your cheque book, but some things in life are priceless.

OK then, would I swap my office-based existence, writing about work all day, for Charlie White's job as Roxton's director of fishing? Hmmm, let me think. Roxtons, you have my number.

Blobs and bling - fishing or rapping?

The bright yellow sparkly blob, commonly used in reservoir fly fishing has become a controversial lure of choice according to this report in the Sunday Telegraph.

Well what did we expect? Rainbow trout, in particular, will go for bright yellow attractors pulled swiftly through the water. Indeed I was advised to try something bright yellow when fishing in the recent One Fly competition on the River Test where the beat had been stocked with rainbows.

Blobs on a prime chalk stream? Sorry if you've spilled your tea all over your trousers but that's what a competition mentality does to people. I wonder what Halford would have made of the blob?

Egg patterns

Matching the hatch? Not quite, but it could be argued that blobs look a little bit like eggs, albeit fast moving eggs if they are retrieved at speed.

Are we not doing something similar when using bright yellow and orange lures fished fast to attract salmon? In this case trying to imitate the local insect life isn't going to do much good because the salmon isn't feeding anyway.

But the trout is looking for food and what we like most, I think, if you will pardon this generalisation, is to aim our fly at a surface feeding trout and see it taking our little fly in the belief that it is eating something just like the flies it has been feeding on for the past hour or two. That, fundamentally, is the difference in fly fishing aesthetics.

In a less obvious way it divided the chalk stream fishers when G E M Skues began to use nymphs. Unlike a fast retrieved blob there is some real skill in imparting life in to a nymph fished at the correct depth and discerning the take when it comes. But here again we can "cheat" by using indicators that can double-up as floats.

And if we are float fishing our flies, what is the difference between that and dangling a bunch of maggots (other than that the maggots move of their own accord)?

Better than thou

I don't much care for reservoir fishing, I don't much care for "world champion" tags or fishing qualifications that say "I am better than thou."

Fishing, for me, is something personal. I don't want to feel pressured to fish all the time. I like to stand and stare. The other day I was enjoying watching Mayflies on the water. Some were coming down to the water and landing on spent flies attracted by some unknown smell perhaps, or was it the shape?

Fish weren't rising for them although they may well have been feeding on the nymphs. But that day I was looking for rising fish. I didn't want to fish nymphs.

But it seems a crazy old world when anglers spend their lives thinking of ways to attract fish then, when they succeed beyond their wildest imaginings, find their new method is outlawed because it is too easy.

Behind this newspaper report, however, there is something not very pleasant. There is an implication in the talk of "yobs with blobs" that fly fishing is attracting members of the West Staines Massiv who shouldn't be doing it.

Rainbow rap

Sooner or later, perhaps, we will be singing along to "rainbow rap" and choosing our "flies" from glitzy bling boxes. We could park our spare flies in our ear-piercings. Now that's an idea.

Well if it keeps young people from stabbing and shooting each other I'm all for it. In time they will tire of the easy fishing and begin listening to the old farts (sorry I meant to say "experienced fishermen") who would never - not in a million years - be tempted to use a blob themselves. Goodness me, what are those yellow things in my fly box? Hide them, quickly. As Ali G would say, "Let's keep it real."
Respek.

The People's Front for the Liberation of Fishing

Fishing or angling? Debate over the name of the new all-embracing organisation that is going to represent angling interests in England and Wales has swung away from Angling (or Angling Unity) to something around that word “fishing” I can exclusively reveal.

This is my first bit of exclusive revealing, I do believe, since I exclusively revealed that the body would be called Angling Unity (or Angling). I had every confidence in this assertion because here, for the first time, anglers were speaking as one.

That was before some splitter suggested “Fishing” of all things. So the betting has swung now to something like the Fishing Association or simply Fishing although you can get good odds on “Judean Liberation Front.”

Apparently there was a feeling that “Angling” sounded too antiquated, the sort of thing that Isaak Walton would do with a pole and a length of cat gut.

Fishing, on the other hand is bold, simple and to the point. Unless, of course, you use a net. Then there’s the problem with gender neutrality. The beauty of “angler” is that it can refer to either sex while the rarely used “fisher” does not trip off the tongue so easily as “fisherman” which can get us in to so much trouble with the gender police.

Fisherman is the word you associate with so-called fishing humour – the male-oriented birthday cards, mugs and tee-shirts depicting silly men standing in the rain in waders, exaggerating the size of their catch or doing unspeakable things with maggots.

Fishermen refer to their wives (they don’t have partners) as “‘er indoors.” They lie about walking the dog or going shopping when really they’re off to the river. They’re always buying tackle they don’t need to feed their obsession and they eat Marmite sandwiches washed down with flasks of lukewarm instant coffee.

It is for this reason that I have persisted with the concept of the “fisher” in my writing. I think it works particularly well in fly fishing and have absolutely no problem now writing of “fly fishers.” Somehow “fly anglers” just doesn’t work so well for me.

Angling, on the other hand, has survived well over the centuries, which is surprising given its description, not of fishing, but merely the angle of rod and line. But it doesn’t look as if it will survive as the name for the new body.

Instead it seems we are marching in to the bright new dawn as fishers who go fishing. Unless someone decides otherwise and at some future date I can exclusively reveal that the People’s Front for the Liberation of Fishing has prevailed.

What ever happened to the Vosso?

For some time now I have been curious to know what happened to the salmon runs on Norway's Vosso River that I read so much about in Arthur Oglesby's book, Salmon.

I started a discussion about it here in this fly fishing forums thread. After carrying out some recent work looking at the salmon farming industry I am now convinced that salmon farming was largely to blame.

There is an excellent feature about the river in the Winter 2007 journal of the Flyfishers' Club. The feature, written by Morten Harangen, mentions a recent fishing trip to the river when he failed to catch anything.

He says the record book for 2005 mentions "seven or eight" salmon caught on the river. But were these genetic Vosso salmon? Or were they escaped farm salmon? It does not say.

The catch is pitifully small, even if, as Harangen asserts, "there is no doubt there are still a few forty to fifty pounders out there."

I hope he is right. What will be difficult to discern is their genetic purity. On the other hand there is every reason to believe that something, if not entirely genetically pure, then very close to the original strain, could be restored even if it hails from a salmon farm cage. This is because a significant constituent of the Mowi strain, the first salmon farm fish to emerge in Norway, were salmon taken from a Vosso tributary, the Bolstad.

These large-growing fish are typically four or five sea-winter fish. The more winters that salmon spend at sea, the bigger they get, hence some excitement in the May Tay Salmon news bulletin from the Tay Salmon Fisheries Board, that a good proportion of the Tay's spring fish this year appear to have been bigger three-winter salmon.

All well and good - I'm as delighted as anyone to see evidence of big spring salmon back in the Tay - but the run is still relatively small compared with the 1970s. A few big salmon does not a spring run make.

As for the Vosso, it was closed in 1992 and re-opened in 1998 without any signs of improvement.

So why did the river collapse? Karl Magne Bolstad whose Berga farm overlooks the Bolstad pool, and which has some of the most famous beats on the river, has no doubt that many smolts were killed by sea lice that accumulate in large numbers around salmon farm cages. But there was also a lot of dumping in the river when a road was built. That killed a lot of fish, he says. Moreover a power plant constructed on the river led to significant changes in water temperature, another possible contributory factor.

It's astonishing how human activity in different areas has collectively destroyed one of the world's most precious wild salmon rivers with barely a whimper of protest. Today, hatchery-reared smolts are being transported past the salmon cages but will that work as a conservation effort?

Bolstad does not sound too optimistic of restoring the strain. A once mighty salmon river, its fish the stuff of legends, has been lost to angling and may never return. That's a crying shame.