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Post by builnacraig on Aug 20, 2007 18:58:57 GMT
The success of the "FishScotland" franchises has been a major development in Scottish salmon fishing over the last five or so years. I am interested in the views of forum members as to whether it has been a good thing or not? Whilst they made salmon fishing a lot more accessible, and have made the T&S river reports seem irrelevant, I have heard it said that local anglers have suffered as all the fishing is now let commercially. Have they put costs up? Very interested in your views.
Builnacraig
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Post by smokiesalmon on Aug 21, 2007 3:30:51 GMT
aye aye m8 how u doing i dont agree with it as i work offshore 3 weeks on 3 weeks off i was lookin fwd to a days fishing on kercock but have found that all days on kerckock have been booked till end of season not just this beat but most beats on most rivers are the same it would be a good idea if it was on a monthly basis rather than annualy. It would appear that certain individuals are booking up the rods months in advance and in doing so they are not allowing other sportsman the chance to enjoy these rivers on the weeks that we could have possibly fished.
rgds the fishing machine
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Post by builnacraig on Aug 21, 2007 6:42:51 GMT
a i work offshore 3 weeks on 3 weeks off rgds the fishing machine Hi Smokie, Surely then you are ideally placed to take advantage of all the fishing available on line. I would love to be in your position. An oil worker with all that time off and plenty of cash to pick and chose where you go fishing. Are there no other beats that you fancy fishing on? The comments you are making back up what I have heard others say. Whilst the sites are new there is lots of fishing but availability soon becomes restricted as more anglers use the system. We will soon be back to the situation before online letting, when it was dead mans shoes to get fishing on the best beats. |
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Post by rpsalmon on Aug 21, 2007 9:23:07 GMT
Many of the beats that are available to book on-line are hardly worth paying to fish. You only need to review a few beats statistics, even a few famous beats, to see what are terrible catch figures. Even on those, I'd put a bet on the Ghillie(s) catching most of the fish!
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Post by juststartedagain on Aug 21, 2007 9:46:27 GMT
SmokieSalmon - there are still quite a few rods left on Kercock..
I find the sites excellent for a newcomer - having lived in Ireland for the last 6 years - it could certainly do with something like this - I found trying to get info re fishing 0 unless it was Mayfly related - was extremely difficult.
Its particularly useful when the beats also have there own website with additional info on - that is what has helped me decied where to fish.
Would be useful to have links to other info i.e. tides/weather.
Can't comment re increase in costs.
Availability seems OK on the Tay (also I think easy to find info elsewhere re beats not listed) but the Tweed sems to be difficult to get on uniless you are in the know..
I don't pay too much attention to things like catches. On th tay some of the beats have been underfished over recent years - the fish are there to be caught. There are also newly improved beats like Islabank which has had a lot of work done to it to improve the access to the pools etc so figures should increase as more people fish it.
Would be good to see some way of spare/free/late availability rods on some of the "private" beats being listed....
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Post by juststartedagain on Aug 21, 2007 9:50:28 GMT
Clearly thats because you are not fishing then otherwise the catches would be up. They are just being fished by the rest of us stupid, comical, ill read and whatever else we are fisherman!
I thought catch figures were down anyway because of the general decrease in the numbers of fish because of other factors as discussed elsewhere on this forum..
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Post by smokiesalmon on Aug 22, 2007 5:22:05 GMT
I agree with rp salmon, most of the good beats are already booked and with me having to spend half of my life at sea and only home for short of 3 weeks plus the kids and the misses take up most of that time, I dont get to fish as much as I would like or you think I could. Because of all these time consuming matters I would preffer to spend an extra quid or two and get a decent days fishing and use my limited time wisely. "Just started" im home on the 3 sept i.e no rods left for kercock as far as I can see!! rgds popeye
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Post by rpsalmon on Aug 22, 2007 10:18:34 GMT
Dear smokiesalmon
I do very much know what it is like attempting to catch fish in hard fished waters, especially when that fishing isn't the best quality. Many of the best salmon anglers in the country fish such waters and I can immediately think of twenty hard and talented anglers who could develop their tactics exponentially if given a year's access to first rate waters.
For about the first ten years of my apprenticeship I mainly fished the same two beats (club/association water), one near the tide and the other quite away, simply in order to learn as much about fishing as possible and I knew I wouldn't be able to do that by fishing easy water all the time. Boy, did I have and learn some hard lessons. Various day trips to other waters, including "quality" waters at the "cheaper" times, gave me insights into various techniques and allowed me to meet certain people I wouldn't have otherwise come across. I was fortunate to be able to take advantage of circumstances to arrange fishing on certain waters and view the general commercialisation of salmon fishing with contempt, looking at the average angler aging by the year I have to wonder what is ahead. I have already seen Chinese, Indonesian and Nigerian salmon anglers and can only dread how much pressure our rivers will face in the future from these anglers of ever increasing wealth.
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Post by tweedsider on Aug 22, 2007 20:43:08 GMT
Hello rpsalmon you are quite correct about the extra pressure on migratory fish stocks. This has been growing steadily during my time on the river, and I speak here of Tweed. Fifty years ago 90% of the salmon anglers seen on the lower river were fishing from boats, hence Tweed ghillies mostly being referred to as boatmen. Beats which then had 2 anglers may now have 4 or even 6 with the majority of them wading. Generally you could say there has been 100% increase in fishing effort.
Tight lines Tweedsider
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Post by salmo2406 on Aug 22, 2007 20:58:37 GMT
T&S river reports seem irrelevant?
As a river reporter does the angling public want us to shut up shop and let the "Tesco Machine" take over?
Either way, It would be ineresting to know.
Please reply.
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Post by rpsalmon on Aug 22, 2007 21:44:33 GMT
Fishing reports which are at least three weeks old are not really of much practical value to me unless they were to give a hint at fishing those stretches next year. When you have a report that merely mentions names and a few fish you really don't get a picture of anything. To me the only time someone should have their name mentioned in a river report is when there is something exceptional about it such as a 35Ib salmon, 20Ib sea trout or that 12 year old Robert XYZ caught his first salmon (the last simply to encourage anglers).
To make a river report worthwhile it surely needs to to state average water/air temperature/water volume/water height/overall number of fish caught by section of river/by method/ any new methods/any diseases.
There is clearly a demand for up to date fishing reports and unless T&S produce them on line for instance, another will do it! It actually surprises me, that T&S or Emap didn't produce a T&S website with forum over 10 years ago!
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Post by builnacraig on Aug 23, 2007 6:01:13 GMT
T&S river reports seem irrelevant? As a river reporter does the angling public want us to shut up shop and let the "Tesco Machine" take over? Either way, It would be ineresting to know. Please reply. Absolutely not! But many reporters have been slow to react to the changing times. Often the T&S reports are just a repeat of the recent catches from the websites. Old news is very uninteresting. There needs to be more creative reporting on local conditions, information on other aspects of river management, etc rather than a list of catches. Off course where there is no Fish ........ website for an particular area the reporter has a few more options. |
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Post by builnacraig on Aug 23, 2007 6:06:32 GMT
There is clearly a demand for up to date fishing reports and unless T&S produce them on line for instance, another will do it! It actually surprises me, that T&S or Emap didn't produce a T&S website with forum over 10 years ago! Very good point rpsalmon. I have seen the figures for the number of hits on Fish Scotland websites and they are quite impressive. A lot of people are logging on every day because the info is so fresh. The daily reporting of catches has been one of the biggest factor in the success of the brand. No doubt this will continue and the printed press will have to evolve to survive. |
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Post by rpsalmon on Aug 23, 2007 9:05:57 GMT
I don't see how the printed press can survive long term in anything like its present glossy magazine format. Very few of the serious salmon anglers I know regularly buy a copy of T&S or the other Fly Fishing/Fly Tying Mag, or the "Total Something or other" magazine I've seen. Even 10 years ago it seemed the exception for someone not to buy T&S and I could never understand how Sandy Leventon kept his job at T&S when sales didn't increase anywhere in proportion to the number of extra anglers.
But even looking at our mobile info tech world I have to wonder if angling will match society's change in focus to online media, my hesitancy because of the Anglers Net run by Andy Nicholson, at one stage it looked as though it was going to be the best in the country but the resources/support/effort seemed to wain with the result the website (appears to me) to be faltering. Obviously with fishscotland sites there is the backing for a basic service but no forum or magazine, perhaps that will change over time and perhaps you will have to pay monthly.
With the technology in front of you now there is a host of resources available, from tracking the weather and rain across the world and country, watching that weather on web cams throughout this country, and checking certain water levels on fishscotland sites. To those of us who, thirty years ago, thought AHE Wood was a lucky so an so for having a river water meter in his house's, now it seems we are swamped with available data. The fish web sites are great from a practical point of view but terrible from the point of view of the extra interest and competition for places to fish. Yes I am being selfish there, because I can foresee a situation where I may never be able to get half decent fishing unless I am prepared to spend ridiculous quantities of money (and I am not).
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Post by rpsalmon on Aug 23, 2007 9:25:36 GMT
Dear salmo2406
I don't want to stop having river reports but personally I don't like the "who caught what" kind of reports because I think some peoples imaginations are encouraged to the point of claiming non existent fish. I recognise that giving relevant, interesting and informative reports is difficult because I tried (once!)it on behalf of someone who went on holiday. Certainly it is my opinion that a report should finish with a couple of sentences covering the period ahead with likely fish movements and tactics for success, including the aims of guiding the inexperienced and encouraging the unwilling.
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