Salm(agedd)on

chriswjx

Well-Known Member
I know there's at least a few others on here who are salmon anglers.

Hope none of you all had plans to fish Norway this season...

Fishing was stopped on most of the southern rivers 2 weeks ago, and I believe a decision on the northern rivers is due any day now.

Worrying (and more importantly, imminent) signs on the doors for salmon angling and the salmon themselves...
 
Yes - salmon fishing was suspended on 33 of the main salmon rivers in Norway at the end of June, owing to a crash in the salmon population.

I believe the same is being considered in Sweden and Denmark too.
 
Would not surprise me about Sweden, guy I know went there last year (and then was going to go to Gaula this year) apparently last year's returns were something like 80% down...

There's debate whether the crash in salmon numbers is due to sea stock reduction and also not helped by the low amount of hill snow that usually will still be melting the now. Also hasn't helped the cause when the Norwegians chap as much as they can catch.* Add in that some disgruntled beat owners pointing that the Gaula river board changed the rules this year to allow for the bigger fish to be chapped...

*From reading messages from a few Norwegians, they have a bigger culture of fishing for food and not just for sport, so decision to stop fishing is generally received alright. Just a bit of a kick for the sports lodges who have lost their customers from this year (although from what I've heard, refunds are not in the offing and in fact one friend was told by the NFU that his travel insurance would not be covering the loss either... Hopefully credit for future years is a possibility, but I think a lot of places still have no idea what they can do - there's no guarantees that fishing will be opened next year)
 
I think one of the problems, which no-one talks about, is hormones in the water affecting reproduction. Because of the number of women (can I say that) on the pill we are putting our river dwellers on the pill as well.

David.
 
I think one of the problems, which no-one talks about, is hormones in the water affecting reproduction. Because of the number of women (can I say that) on the pill we are putting our river dwellers on the pill as well.

David.
Added to that is the decline in sand eel stocks through over fishing, coupled with them moving further north due to sea temperature.
If it's that bad in Norway it doesn't bode well for our rivers.
 
I think one of the problems, which no-one talks about, is hormones in the water affecting reproduction. Because of the number of women (can I say that) on the pill we are putting our river dwellers on the pill as well.

David.

Not sure how much of that is happening along the riverbanks of Norway to be honest bud...

Although I did have a skim after reading your reply (I'll have another look after work) - I do agree it possibly could be something to have a look at, but honestly think it's quite far down the list of suspects... Case studies I saw seem to be prolonged exposure in fixed volumes (it was in a lake), not large volumes of moving water like in the River Tay or especially in Scandinavia's snowmelt rivers.

I'm more inclined to think as Jelen, with reduced feed, not to mention smolt mortality... Mind seeing tracking data that suggest smolts will congregate briefly around the open water nets for the free food before moving out onto their migration routes - add in the photos from Canada where they were finding smolts with over half a dozen sealice on them. I think there's much bigger ecological problems we've caused them.
 
It appears that there is still some fishing in the Northern Norwegian rivers but even this will be reviewed as the season progresses. It seems that there has been an increase in disease (?gyrodactylus), lower runs of fish and changes in water temperatures.
I wonder whether the clowns in Holyrood will ponder this one and try and stop all Salmon fishing in Scotland - as long as they can still pander to the fake salmon companies - funnily enough, many of which are run by Norwegian companies.....rather than try and give Atlantic Salmon a bit of help by putting a complete ban on any new fake salmon farms and fallowing those within any river estuaries!
 
It's a pretty dire situation and a lot of grasping at straws over the last 5-6 years.
20 salmon/sea trout would have been a pretty poor season to my own rod for a good 25ish years but the last 3 season I've had the grand total of 4.
Don't put in near as much hours these days though but still get some top outings with the dry fly for the broonies but hrs to salmon/sea troot would be pretty damning.
 
Aquaculture should be banned. The fjords are dying and the native fish stocks severely reduced through escapees and disease. It would cost a lot more but it needs to be moved on land so that the pollutants, etc can be dealt with in a correct manner.

Whereas at the moment the concept of the big salmon farming companies is to move operations out to deep sea.
 
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