Kelt's

[salmonking]

After witnessing fish cutting reds on lower /middle beats of the whiteadder two weeks previous,i had a look at the redds today,
not a fish to be seen.
Does anyone think these fish may have made it back to the estuary due to the high water levels?,i must have counted thirty fish that previous week,all in the one area,obviously there would be a lot more down/up stream as i was observing from a bridge.
I'd be most interested in your thoughts.













that previous week

[zeolite]

Don't kelts have to spend time getting their metabolism readjusted for saltwater or they get salt poisoning?

[johnmac]

Im not 100% but i think that salmon can get used to brackish water as soon as they hit the tidle reaches..... they just need to mull about a bit... then the "osmoregulation" kicks in thanks to the "loop of Henley" and then they are off! I might be talking complete bollox! but thats what i was taught!!!

Then the saltywater kills off any saprolegnia ssp that they may have picked up... then if they are lucky they head off avoiding the seals! and the cormorants.......

[williegunn]

Can I first point out you do not need the apostrophe in the title.

Kelts usually hang around for a while, the male fish remain guarding the redds. They eventually die off.
The high water has probably moved them around that's all.

[wilbert]

Most of the dead kelts I see are males, they use up more energy trying to get a second go where the females leisurely make their way back to sea. Don't know how long they spend in the becks after spawning but they are certainly in the rivers until April or even May depending on river levels.

[ceilidh]

Williegunn will probably know the origin of this, but I believe there was a study done at Fascally some years ago, which tried to analyse the relative mortality rates of cock and hen kelts. In both cases the rates were very high, something in the region of 90% for cocks and 70% for hens. It would be interesting to know if there have been any more recent studies.