News [2008] [2007] [2006] [2005] [2004] [2003] [2002] [2001] [2000] [1999] [1998] [1997]
Delphi Fishery Report - 2006
Drift nets will go, says Government
In a historic move, the Irish Government has decided to adopt the recommendations of the Independent Salmon Group (the so-called “three wise men”) and to introduce a ban on all drift-netting with effect from the 2007 season.
The Cabinet decided to ignore a last-minute campaign by some of its own party members and by the main opposition party which sought a voluntary rather than a mandatory buy-out of the net licences. Calls for an increase in the proposed €30 million “hardship fund” were also rejected.
The move will have very significant implications for salmon conservation throughout Ireland - and for Delphi.
A number of details have yet to be clarified and there remain some serious controversies from the angling perspective. But the end of drift-netting will be greeted at home and abroad as the most significant salmon conservation measure of the last 50 years.
The report of the three wise men recommended that no angling (even by catch & release), or estuary draft netting, should take place on rivers that are failing to reach their conservation limit. And, based on preliminary scientific data, most Irish rivers (but not Delphi) currently fall into that category. Whether it is wise totally to remove the presence of anglers from the affected river banks is, to say the least, debatable - not least because it has been shown on Scotland’s River Dee and elsewhere that the great majority of fish caught and released (over 90%) do survive to spawn.
Equally controversial is the proposal to remove the ban on the sale of rod-caught fish. While this may give some comfort to processors deprived of their main source of wild fish, it would reopen a route for disposing of illegally caught fish and would be likely to motivate the minority of unscrupulous anglers to redouble their efforts to kill fish. And few processors were wholly or largely reliant on wild salmon.
The price of wild salmon is sure to increase sharply. This will have obvious implications for anti-poaching protection, both at sea and in freshwater. Adequate funding for this will be a big issue. Delphi will be making an increased private investment in this area.
There are also concerns about the process for determining whether or not a river has reached its conservation limit. Who will decide? And will there be an appeal mechanism? To close down a river completely could have very grave consequences for some angling businesses, which, unlike the netsmen, may rely totally on angling to survive.
Yet to be worked out is how the tourism industry and how river owners will contribute to the hardship fund. But significant contributions will undoubtedly have to be made. Individual anglers will find their licence cost doubled by the imposition of a 100% “environmental stamp”.
The National Salmon Commission is now expected to advise the Minister on the detailed implementation of the report. The Commission, which has done sterling work over the past six years (albeit at a painfully slow pace and paying excessive heed to the State fishery board managers), will hopefully advise the Minister to address some of the problems in the proposals.
In summary, we are gobsmacked and delighted that common sense has prevailed. The real winner will be the salmon, but more fish in all Irish rivers will mean more for everyone, Delphi included. And our new rules will mean that we will actually kill less wild salmon, not more.
The hardship fund for netsmen may not be the most generous, but it seems
fair for a micro-industry that had largely lived beneath the Revenue’s
radar. Very few
netsmen will be seriously deprived.
The momentous decision, for which anglers and conservationists have been campaigning for over forty years, follows a ministerial commitment earlier this year to “implement the scientific advice in full for the 2007 season”. The scientists have called for an end to mixed-stock fishing at sea.
Fresh impetus for the decision was given by a report to the Minister from the “three wise men” he asked to advise him on the implications of a drift net ban. The trio affirmed the need for the ban and set out a plan for its implementation, including the creation of a “hardship fund” for netsmen (see later story).
The report comes at a time when stocks of wild salmon are in sharp decline. Amid clear signs of feeding problems and other serious difficulties at sea, it would have been quite foolhardy to continue to allow large-scale offshore netting.
Furthermore, the Irish nets are taking salmon destined for other countries, often from severely depleted rivers that can ill afford the loss. The policy shift will doubtless be greeted by loud cheers in Britain, France and Spain, which have all suffered from Irish interception of their salmon.
The likely acceptance by the Minister, Noel Demspey, of the trio’s recommendations will earn him considerable credit, despite being forcefully opposed by many in the netting industry and by some in his own party. It will reflect a new recognition that salmon are important (and perhaps also that anglers and conservationists account for many more votes than netsmen).
The greatest plaudits must be awarded to Niall Greene and his Stop Now campaign committee. The national campaign to get rid of drift nets was conducted with intelligence, determination and political sophistication, backed by irrefutable logic that was cogently communicated. The conservation arguments, well marshalled by the government’s own scientists (most notably Niall O’Maoileidigh & Paddy Gargan), were finally accepted by all political parties.
Credit, too, must go to those Brussels eurocrats who finally started to apply pressure on the Irish government to accept its responsibilities. And, for helping to trigger the EU move, praise must also be heaped on Brian Marshall of England’s Wessex Rivers Trust, whose formal complaint to the EU produced astonishingly rapid results.
Finally, the catalytic contribution of Icelander Orri Vigfussen, whose 20-year campaign to revive the world’s salmon stocks has been conducted with enormous energy, must be recognised.
If it were possible in Ireland to make awards for grit and achievement in the field of salmon conservation, these are the men who would deserve the medals, the knighthoods and the hall-of-fame memberships.
The move against Ireland’s drift nets was clearly overdue. Ireland was the last of the north Atlantic countries to allow interceptory netting on such a scale. Elsewhere it had already been recognised that a renaissance of troubled salmon stocks was simply not possible with such indiscriminate exploitation and such an imperfect quota system.
Although drift-netting was not the only major problem confronting wild salmon, it was the one about which something could most readily be done. Netsmen are to be fully compensated but some will still feel aggrieved at being singled out and deprived of what had become a neo-traditional pastime, generating, for a few, an important seasonal income.
Drift nets are said to intercept at least 75% of Ireland’s summer runs of salmon and grilse. The true hit rate is probably much higher, because many fish in the nets are eaten by seals and never landed or accounted for. And many smaller fish wriggle through the nets but are badly damaged by the monofilament - hardly a great advertisement for Irish angling.
It is therefore thought likely that future runs of grilse and summer salmon will, all other things being constant (as if!), improve by a factor of three or even four in terms of numbers. And the average size of the fish entering the rivers should also increase significantly, with the prospect of good numbers of 5, 6 and 7 pound grilse for the first time since the 1950s.
It is obviously imperative that the point of slaughter is not simply transferred to estuarine draft nets (which may continue to operate on a quota system) or to unscrupulous down-river anglers. What matters most is that more fish should reach the spawning grounds to revive abundant stocks of salmon in all Irish rivers.
Good catches despite dry weather and unexplained grilse size slump
A peculiar year at Delphi delivered unexpectedly good runs of spring salmon, substantial but very late runs of amazingly small grilse, and yet another wipe-out of sea trout.
A severe shortage of rain, especially in the early spring and in June/July/August, hindered the fishing somewhat. But, with a total catch of 584 salmon, 2006 surprisingly emerged as the fourth best year for salmon angling in Delphi’s history (only bettered by 1997, 1998 and 2001).
But the average weight of the grilse - at just 2.87 pounds - reached a record low and gave cause for concern. The 25% size slump, despite the unusually low incidence of netting, was totally unexpected.
Nonetheless, Delphi’s 10-year average annual catch now stands at 538 salmon. And, with over 91% caught on fly, these catches make Delphi one of the best little salmon fisheries in Ireland. The good salmon catches compensate a little (but by no means fully) for the once-famous sea trout stocks, inexcusably destroyed by salmon farming.
The importance of the Delphi hatchery was re-emphasised in 2006: fin-clipped hatchery-origin salmon accounted for nearly 84% of the catch. The wild salmon total, at 95 fish, was reasonable but slightly below the 20-year average of 108, reflecting the downward trend on many Irish rivers over recent years.
Following the poor run of grilse in 2005, an equally poor spring run was expected in 2006, since these two-sea-winter fish would have derived from the same cohort of smolts that migrated out in the spring of 2004. If the smolts fared badly at sea to produce poor grilse runs after one year at sea, then the subsequent spring run should, logically, also have faltered. But it didn’t.
The spring fishing in 2006 was actually very good, which raises all sorts of questions. Is some form of cyclical switch taking place, with more fish staying out for a second winter at sea? If so, why? Or did the grilse-smolts go somewhere different to the springer-smolts and encounter more severe feeding or exploitation problems? Or is a general shortage of food forcing more fish to stay out longer and reducing the size of both grilse and springers? There are no ready answers.
Some people think that a severe “red tide” of algae off the west coast in the summer of 2005 affected the grilse. Others think sea lice from salmon farms were a major factor, but that should surely have affected both grilse-smolts and springer-smolts equally. Nor can offshore drift-netting or estuary draft nets be easily blamed, because most of the netsmen fared quite badly in 2005 and, although a little better, catches were also well down in 2006, .
Some complex interaction between global warming, oceanic currents and feeding may be the explanation. Or perhaps it’s all due to industrial fishing, either of fodder fish or of the smolts themselves, that happened to hit the grilse-smolts more severely than the others after they had split up and gone their separate ways.
The international marine research programme, SALSEA, being orchestrated by the North Atlantic Salmon Conservation Organisation, is badly needed to answer some of these questions. Marine survival rates of salmon are trending ever lower and there is a severe shortage of hard information on the marine phase of the salmon’s life.
Whatever the problems at sea, there was plenty of action at Delphi in 2006 and many anglers had exceptionally fruitful visits. But the shift in the grilse run from June/July to July/August left some June rods disappointed.
The change in the timing of the run is now beginning to look significant, since it was the fifth year in a row that the grilse arrived “late”. In the 10 years to 2001, June was invariably better for angling than July, and often a lot better. For the past five years, however, July has been better, and this year a lot better. Will it stay that way?
But the delay may simply have been weather-related. With the exception of May and September, which were both seriously wet, the season was unusually dry, which made fishing much more difficult.
Of particular note were the three very dry months in a row, June/July/August, which may have affected the timing of the grilse run; rainfall in each of these months was less than 60% of normal. July was actually the second driest on record.
Given the combination of the unsuitable weather and the (possibly connected) lateness of the grilse run, it should really have been a pretty poor summer. But the catches were actually very good, numerically at least, throughout July (the 4th best ever), August (a new record) and September (the 2nd best ever). Fresh fish ran well into September, which is unprecedented at Delphi, where sea-liced fish after mid-July are normally a great rarity.
The best fish of the season once again fell to Angus Sutherland, the Dublin-based Scot who also bagged the best fish in 2001. Full details of the season, month by month, can be found overleaf. And the table opposite summarises all the numbers.
Wild fish restrictions tightened
We are tightening up the rules in relation to killing wild salmon. The existing presumption is that all wild fish should be returned alive, but exception was made for an angler’s first fish of the season (if it happened to be wild).
For 2007, however, the only wild fish that may be killed are those that are an angler’s very first ever salmon or a trophy salmon (estimated at 14lbs plus) – and we would strongly encourage the release even of the latter.
Don’t forget that 75% or more of all Delphi’s springers and grilse are hatchery-origin fish, which must be killed for tag recovery, so the release of wild fish should not be an undue hardship for those who like to take an occasional fish for the table. We are far from being catch-and-release fanatics, but the special circumstances of Delphi allow a strict rule to be made.
We know that some fish bleed badly and may not be successfully released. But, if handled properly, most will survive. And don’t forget there are such things as barbless hooks. If a wild fish does die, it should be brought in and recorded, but we will continue with our draconian policy of keeping these fish for the Lodge (except for the special exemptions noted above).
Also, by way of clarification, all trout must be released alive, even those that appear to be cannibal brown trout (they are probably sea trout).
New river beat system
After careful consideration, we have decided to split the river into two half-beats. Beat 1 will end with Deadmans Pool and Beat 2 will begin with the Grilse Pool. All rods will fish both beats in rotation during each morning or afternoon session, but Pair A will fish Beat 1 from 9am to 11.00am. Pair B from 11.00am to 1pm, Pair C from 2.00pm to 4.00pm and Pair D from 4.00pm to 6pm.
The margins of the day outside those hours (early mornings and late evenings) may be fished (by arrangement) by the pair whose slot is closest in time. And all rods will be rotated fairly through A, B, C & D during the course of the week. Confused? We think you’ll get used to it.
The new system will ensure a fairer share for all and will encourage more experimentation and less pool-hogging. Disputes about early morning fishing and traffic jams on the lower pools will hopefully become things of the past.
As it happens, of the 301 fish caught on the main river in 2006, 150 were caught on Beat 1 and 151 on Beat 2. Furthermore, each beat has seven pools that delivered more than a handful of fish. So there is considerable equity in the new arrangements. We also plan a stile at the Schoolhouse Pool and improved car parking at the Grilse Pool gate.
Lice treatment results awaited
All hatchery-reared salmon smolts, except for a control group of 10,000, are now treated with an anti-louse agent prior to their release. The first such release was in April 2005, leading to grilse in 2006 and, hopefully, springers in 2007. We are currently studying the tag returns for the 2006 grilse to see if there was any significant difference between the treated group and the control group.
Given the appalling lice control on our local salmon farm in the spring of 2005 (and, incidentally, again in 2006), which led to a further collapse of seatrout that summer, it is possible that our salmon smolts were (or would otherwise have been) also adversely affected, as other experiments in Norway, Canada and Ireland have shown. The results of our tag-reading, once reviewed by qualified scientists, should enable measurement of the impact of sea lice on Delphi’s wild salmon. Watch this space.
Doolough’s healthy char stocks
A new netting survey of Doolough’s depths has revealed that our wild char stocks are alive and well. Scientists, anxious to examine the genetics of Ireland’s fast-disappearing char populations, bagged 14 fish in one night from Doolough.
The fish were small (well under ½ pound) but apparently plentiful. They are probably an important component of the food supply for Doolough’s large cannibal trout, a handful of which (up to 9 pounds in weight) are caught each season.
Greene’s Gablock
To mark the enormous contribution of Niall Greene and his Stop Now team to the removal of drift nets in Ireland, we have commissioned Peter O’Reilly to design and produce a new salmon fly, to be known as Greene’s Gablock.
A gablock is defined as “a) the metal spur of a fighting cock, or b) a crowbar”, both of which definitions seem entirely appropriate. And any word starting with “gab” seems especially appropriate to Niall.
The fly will be green, black and silver in colour and will be exclusively tied on silver barbless single hooks, as is only right and fitting.
A framed set of the new flies will be presented to Niall and his team at a special dinner in Delphi Lodge. And, of course, these landmark flies will be for sale at Delphi in sizes 3,5,7 & 9 – for one year only.
Urs hits 250
Regular Swiss visitor Urs Leibundgut caught his 250th Delphi salmon in 2006 and is edging ever closer the becoming the top salmon rod of the past 21 seasons at Delphi. Many congratulations to Urs.
Another landmark reached in 2006 was Bill Brown’s 50th Delphi salmon after a particularly successful year.
Virginities lost in 2006
Many anglers at Delphi caught their first salmon in 2006 – or their first on fly. Several were children [*]:
First ever
Victor Albrecht* Germany
Tim Byrne Britain
Catherine Cunningham N Ireland
Augustin Fenart* France
Ross Fraser* Ireland
James Friedrich Britain
Jonathan Ganly* Ireland
Harry Lewis* Ireland
Oisin Mahon Ireland
Frank Manies USA
John Monaghan Britain
Rob Milner Britain
Caleb Morrison* N Ireland
Franck Moulmys France
Woodley Murphy USA
David Orme USA
Emma Orme* USA
Austin Reynolds Britain
John Scanlon Ireland
Agnieska Skorupska Poland
Darryl Smith Britain
Graham Smith Britain
Greg Smith Britain
Jack Spencer Germany
Jim Sullivan USA
Jaap van Ester Holland
Stephen Wade* Ireland
First on fly
Joe Barnes Ireland
Ciaran Boland Ireland
Noel Flanagan Ireland
Ger Fogarty Ireland
Jack Leonard Britain
News [2008] [2007] [2006] [2005] [2004] [2003] [2002] [2001] [2000] [1999] [1998] [1997]