Monster Salmon caught on the Ness

[Fruin]

Executioner,

What are you tryng to contribute to this thread?

[executioner]

I asked a salmon fishing related question.....which you eventually got round to answering in your own way Mmmmmm....

As for griping about you or your administrators I can only think of one question that you and only you would take as me griping and that was when Altmor modified one of my posts and when I asked why....surprise,,,surprise it got Zapped!!!

Executioner

PS. your right! lets not spoil this thread with your twisting things to suit yourself. I have no itention of PMing you so as far as I'm concerned that is the end of the discussion.

[charlieh]

I don't accept the theory that big fish are less valuable when it comes to spawning, on account of their age. A large male salmon such as this is almost certainly going to be a maiden fish, probably of 2 river winters plus 4 sea winters. As such it might be one or two years older than the run-of-the-mill fish but it is hardly geriatric!

I have heard it said that large sea trout are not so useful in hatcheries, but they are very different. They tend to be hen fish, and are likely to have made a number of previous spawning runs. It might well follow therefore that they are 'over the hill', but I really don't see that this should be assumed to be the case with the Ness salmon.

In the hatchery on the Vosso, where wild fish runs have sunk to a perilously low level, for many years efforts have been made to keep the almost uniquely late-maturing strain of very large fish going by concentrating their efforts on the largest broodstock, particularly when it comes to the cock fish. These fish would typically be older than the Ness fish, as 3 river winters is the standard before smolting, plus the 4 sea winters you would expect of this class of fish. I am not aware of any issues of viability there.

[castslikeaghille]

charlieh said:

I don't accept the theory that big fish are less valuable when it comes to spawning.......

In the hatchery on the Vosso, where wild fish runs have sunk to a perilously low level, for many years efforts have been made to keep the almost uniquely late-maturing strain of very large fish going by concentrating their efforts on the largest broodstock, particularly when it comes to the cock fish. These fish would typically be older than the Ness fish, as 3 river winters is the standard before smolting, plus the 4 sea winters you would expect of this class of fish. I am not aware of any issues of viability there.

Apart from the fact that the Vosso sank into the abyss and, by all reported accounts here, remains there despite all the efforts with the big fish? Nice try, but you are going against accepted wisdom and real experience of successful salmon rearing/farming across the globe.

Regards

CLaG

[struie]

I am no advocate of stocking (unless stocks are desperately low) but it is worth noting that the Alta are now using cock fish up to 28 kilos (60 lb plus) and hens up to 18 kg (40 lb). Whether it will work (produce the results they are looking for) is another matter.

[charlieh]

castslikeaghille said:

Apart from the fact that the Vosso sank into the abyss and, by all reported accounts here, remains there despite all the efforts with the big fish? Nice try, but you are going against accepted wisdom and real experience of successful salmon rearing/farming across the globe.

Are you suggesting there is a link between the viability of the Vosso salmon at spawning and the river's decline? Look at the facts. The river supported a substantial run of 4SW fish for as long as anyone knows - certainly well back into the century before last - to the extent that 40lbers typically outnumbered grilse in the Bolstad rod catch up to the collapse in the late '80s. If you believe, as I do, that like tends to breed like, it's hard to deny that the big fish did OK on the redds there!

As I have set out in some detail (and as has been backed up subsequently in private correspondence with a couple of people in Norway), the reason for the catastrophic decline is unclear, but the fish cages in the fjord seem the most likely culprits. The Vosso hatchery is successfully rearing numbers of fish to smolt stage, but they are simply not making it back as adults.

If the big stock fish were unviable, it seems most unlikely that this failure would show up at post-smolt stage. Surely lack of viability of big cock fish would reveal itself in ova going unfertilised, which is evidently not the case.

The Vosso hatchery has been running for a good number of years, going back to well before the runs collapsed. If there was a problem with viability of big fish, they has been plenty of time to detect that and alter their stock selection accordingly. They have not seen fit to do so, and when they had access to reasonable numbers of broodstock would single out the largest to try to improve the strain. Scottish hatcheries may not like using big fish for other reasons (Wilbert mentions difficulties of handling, for example, and that is perhaps understandable if they're not used, as the Vosso guys are, to handling big fish). The big fish may perhaps produce less milt per lb of body weight, but do you really think that a 40+lb fish is going to produce less milt in absolute terms than a 20lb fish?

Can you back up your 'accepted wisdom and real experience from across the globe', or is this in fact just hearsay? The Lochy hatchery, for example, probably has access to some big fish - do they reject 30lb cock fish in favour of 10lbers? If so I'd suggest that's a quick way to lose the river's carefully cultivated reputation for big fish!

[castslikeaghille]

'A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still' - you believe what you genuinely want to believe - I'll stumble along with our boring old reality, and the world will remain a colourful place notwithstanding both our views.

Good luck

CLaG

[tynetraveller]

Room for one more in your reality Charlie? I have a very mediocre degree in Behavioural Ecology, which is basically the study of how animal behaviour can teach us about evolution. The few things I learnt doing it would definitely tell me that if there are any fish out there still pursuing a near suicidal four sea winter strategy then the massive risks involved in it must be paid off in a big way on the spawning grounds.

It is undeniably true that big c0cks produce less milt per pound. It may even be true that they produce less total volume than smaller males, although i personally doubt it, but how much has this to do with spawning success? The ability to defend the best redds and breed with the biggest, fittest hens, or to sit in the most desirable and safest lie in the river are all the gift of the forty pounder. How much of a factor is sheer volume of milt compared to these?

Just because it is easier for the hatchery folk to pick up and strip an eight pounder, don't rule out the usefulness of the bigger fish. It is certainly fair to say that in general, like does breed like in all species.

In these days of high sea mortality it is undeniable that a grilse strategy seems to be working much better than the high SW strategy, or else our rivers would be full of the big boys and girls, but the fact that 4sw still exist in numbers in the Northern Rivers of Norway, Russia, and New Brunswick and infrequently elsewhere means that the risk at sea is sometimes worth the reward on the spawning beds- Otherwise those fish would have been out-competed from the gene pool by grilse and 2/3 sw fish a long, long time ago.

[martin]

"FACT" big fish have less milt than smaller fish!

When you say "the ability to defend the best redds" The bigger fish struggle to have sucessful spawning due the the lact of mobility. they take longer to get into position that when the sneaky wee fish nip and and do the buisness.

The only good think the big ones are good for are genetics.

But going by the hatchery rules down you are only meant to use 1 cock fish per batch of eggs. So if the cock is a dud a batch is wasted.