The Committee's Blog

On 23 February the Scottish Government Salmon and Recreational Fisheries Team sent an email that many of you may have either received or heard about. The email begins:

 
“Legislation was laid in the Scottish Parliament earlier today to introduce a package of conservation measures (including a separate Order covering the Tweed District) to manage the exploitation of Atlantic salmon. The measures come into force on 31 March 2016 and take effect from 1 April.

 
What was not made clear in this email was that while legislation was laid it has not been passed.

 
Indeed we can confirm that Mr Alex Fergusson MSP for Galloway and Upper Nithsdale will move for a motion of annulment to stop this legislation being implemented which will result in it being taken to the RACCE committee who will consider the motion of annulment.

 
The committee believe that the RACCE Committee hearing will take place on or around 17 March and while we must be realistic and acknowledge that the composition of the committee means that a successful appeal is unlikely there is still a chance that this legislation can be thrown out at this stage.

 
Members may also be interested to know that the committee are still waiting to hear from our lawyers about our application to take our category 3 status to Judicial Review. We believe we have a strong case to successfully challenge the decision to place us in a category 3 but must wait and see whether the lawyers are prepared to take on our case.

 
Therefore for the avoidance of doubt we will continue to issue tags until the legislation is passed through parliament.
Members purchasing tickets should note that even though tags have been supplied, if the legislation is successfully introduced then the tags will be null and void and all anglers will have to comply with the Government decision to enforce 100% catch and release on the Lomond system.

LLAIA Committee.

Members should note that the Wild Fishery Review Team have published a further consultation document in relation to fishery reform in Scotland. This document contains a number of proposals and seeks the views of anglers and indeed all other interested parties on the future direction of travel with respect to fishery management in Scotland. It can be accessed at:

 
https://consult.scotland.gov.uk/wild-fisheries-reform-team/draft-wild-fisheries-strategy

 
While some members may be uninterested in yet another consultation document this piece of work is perhaps the most important yet from a long term perspective as it articulates a range of options with regards to the future management structure of Scottish fisheries. It is also vitally important to note that within the consultation document it is clear that the government will legislate in respect of all fish species and not just salmon and sea trout.

 
Having read the proposed Bill it is clear that the emphasis would now appear to be around the introduction of 12 – 18 Fishery Management Areas (FMAs). These areas will be designated by Government but crucially it would appear that at this time FMOs will not be imposed in each area, instead application will be sought from a ‘person’ (not being an individual) to form an FMO within the FMA.

 
We have been informed that in the initial period of transition there could conceivably be more than one FMO in any given FMA and it is also possible that FMA boundaries could change to take account of decisions to merge FMO’s that may exist in different FMA’s. Quite frankly nothing is set in stone at this time and members should be aware that there is nothing at this stage to preclude the formation of Lomond only FMO even if we are part of a larger FMA.

 
Members are therefore asked to consider the consultation document carefully and to make their views known to the committee in good time prior to the conclusion of the consultation exercise and in any case by 15 April 2016.

 
LLAIA Committee

In 2015 Ms Hannele Honkanen, a PhD student of the University of Glasgow based at Scottish Centre for the Environment (SCENE) undertook a smolt tagging experiment supported by Scottish and Southern Energy, SEPA, the Loch Lomond Fisheries Trust and the Loch Lomond Angling Improvement Association. This work was very similar to the project described by Marnoch in his thread on the Deveron experiment.

 
The plan was to trap 60 smolts of a suitable size within the River Endrick, insert small transmitters within them and then monitor their progress through the Lomond system to the outer Clyde Estuary around Greenock. A similar study had been undertaken on the Foyle system in Ireland and it was found that smolt mortality at the time of insertion had been very low, thus giving good confidence in any results obtained.

 
Smolts would be tracked throughout the system using an array of receivers strategically placed on the River Endrick (4), Loch Lomond (8), River Leven (4) and the Clyde estuary (8). As each transmitter had a unique identifier tracking the smolts is a relatively simple process whereby the monitoring equipment records the individual smolt as it passes within range.

 
As we are all aware 2015 was a bit of an unusual year weather wise. High water and low temperatures throughout the spring period really interfered with the smolt trapping operation and by the time that we were able to actively deploy the smolt trap without a risk of it being washed into Loch Lomond most of the Endrick smolts had run. However, towards the end of May 10 smolts of the requisite size were eventually caught, tagged and released to continue their migration.

 
The smolts once released on the Endrick quickly made their way downstream and 9 out of the 10 made it to the first monitoring point. Only 7 smolts made it as far as receiver numbers 2 and 3 and only 5 made it to the mouth of the Endrick. Smolt migration from point of capture to the mouth of the Endrick took on average just over 24 hours.
Only 4 smolts actually made it into the Loch and only 2 successfully made it into the River Leven, taking 6 and 11 days respectively. In comparison the smolts spent next to no time in the Leven, entering the estuary 146 and 158 minutes after moving through the barrage at Balloch.

 
None of the tagged Endrick smolts made it past the array in the outer Estuary.
Given there were tags still to be used it was decided to catch smolts in the Leven and see how they fared. Nine smolts were caught by fly fishing on the Leven in late May and were transported to the Loch. Of these fish only 4 made it back into the Leven and migrated downstream at a considerably slower rate than the Endrick smolts (average of around 3 days.

 
Again no smolts were lost in the Leven all entering the estuary, however, only one smolt made it past the monitoring array in the lower estuary.
Predation rates are in the following ranges:
Endrick Loch Lomond Leven Estuary
Endrick (10 smolts) 6 (60%) 2 (50%) 0 2 (100%)
Leven (9 smolts) n/a 5 ((55%) 0 3 (75%)

Therefore from 19 tag smolts only one made it as far as the open sea (95% losses). In the Foyle experiment extremely high smolt predation was also found before these smolts made it to the open sea (85% +). The results from both studies would tend to indicate that while we have problems at sea the real answer may lie far closer to home.
The full paper on the Lomond smolt tracking experiment, which includes details of work done around the tracking of estuary sea trout will be published later in the year and once ready will be hosted on this site.

LLAIA Committee

AGM Report.

What the 115 AGM of the LLAIA lacked in time management it certainly made up for in content. This was the second year that we have invited guest speakers to present to our members and it is certain that they made an impact.

 
First off was Ms Hannele Honkanen, a PhD student of the University of Glasgow who is based at the Scottish Centre for the Environment (SCENE). Han undertook the 2015 smolt tagging experiment on the Lomond system and delivered a presentation on the results that have been captured to date. The importance of this work is such that a separate article has been prepared and has been posted at the end of this report. The figures make grim reading, out of 19 salmon smolts tagged only 1 (one) made it to the open sea. This probably tells us all we need to know about the level of predation in our system, whether it be in-river, in the Loch or in the inner estuary.
A number of sea trout were also tagged and while the data from a number of the monitoring stations has still to be recovered early indications are that the good catches of sea trout on the Leven last October could have been connected with a late run of these fish into the Loch.
As soon as Han has published her PhD thesis we will provide members with an online link to read the report in full. We are also delighted to announce that Han will be undertaking another smolt tagging experiment on the Lomond system this year which will provide us with even more data on these fish. Let us hope that the level of predation is nowhere near as significant as it would appear to have been last year.

 
Following Han we had an input from 2 further guest speakers Jeff Gibbons from the Scottish Government and Dr Chris Horrell from RAFTS. Both presented on the current situation with regards to the salmon fishing scene in Scotland, considered how this may develop with the advent of Fishery Management Organisations (FMOs) and talked about their own individual areas of expertise. There was no doubt that members had and took the opportunity to question both speakers on the issues that concerned them the most. Questions were asked on several topics including the categorisation of the Lomond system as grade 3, the impact of aquaculture and predation on salmon and sea trout stocks and why this wasn’t considered as part of the WFR and the future development of FMO’s. Both presenters held up to the challenge and while members might not have liked some of the answers they got it was at least an opportunity to put our case and to show how passionately we care for our system.

 
On to the AGM itself which kicked off an hour late due to the volume of questions put to our last 2 speakers. Three items were put to a vote and were carried as follows:
1. Increase in membership fees from 2017 was passed, however, OAP membership fees would rise at a rate of £10 per annum until the OAP fee was 60% of the full fee as opposed to the current 42%.
2. A new by-law will be introduced from 2017 that limits the number of salmon that can be killed in any given day to 1 (one).
3. A new bylaw will be introduced from 2017 that prohibits the killing of salmon until 1 May, making this in line with the ban on killing sea trout.
Whether votes 2 and 3 will be implemented will of course be dependent on the categorisation of the system.
Finally Eddie Edmonstone was re-elected as vice chairman for a further 3 years.

LLAIA Committee.