Taker or a Non Taker

[martin]

I remember reading something bout this years ago in Trout and Salmon i think. If i recall they reckoned there was a genetic difference between a taker and a non taker. Which in hindside seems logical.
Cause if you think bout the number of salmon that you must cover every time you fish and how many you actually make contact with, why would so many not be interested???
So if there is a difference between takers and non takers, everytime we kill a fish that we have caught, we are killing a "taker" so less "takers" will be bred.
This making a decline in the amount of rod caught fish even alough the fish counters remain on average.
My personal opinion is that there could be something in this.
What do the rest of you think?

[Fruin]

If there is a definite genetic difference between takers and non-takers, I could see how the argument for C&R would be much stronger. However, I would think that this argument, if factual, would have been made before now.

[martin]

yea your proberly right.

I was just looking for personal opinions.

I think scientifically if proberly cant be proven. Just seems strange that the rivers with high catch and realese rates seem to be catching a lot more fish recently.

[whippy]

A genetic difference between taking and non-taking fish would indeed be amazing. I thought scientific work of many years standing had completely destroyed such crack pot ideas.

[Fruin]

Forever the diplomat, Whippy

[Willow Man]

;D ;D ;D

There has been some thoughts on this subject but as far as I know nothing was conclusive.

Like with many things in nature the study and learning goes on.

I for one do not think there are takers and non takers mind if you were to throw women into the equation then my view might change. ;D ;D ;D
Just joking girls...........no need to start typing nasty replies to me! ;D ;D

[whippy]

Get a book on basic biology or look at Wikipedia, understand the basics and then you will realise why I described the idea as crack pot.

[castslikeaghille]

whippy said:

Get a book on basic biology or look at Wikipedia, understand the basics and then you will realise why I described the idea as crack pot.

Hhhhmmm. Are you familiar with breeding race horses and Lee Wulff's analogous theories relating to reasons for Atlantic salmon taking?

Regards

CLaG

[feroxfan]

the articule was i think in t&s and the author was the late richard waddington.

[Fruin]

Whippy,

The scientific research that has been carried out has highlighted that, not only do you get different genetic strains within a system, you get different genetic strains within the same river.

Is it so hard to believe that one particular genetic strain is more likely to be a taker than another?

Nobody is saying that the article published in Trout and Salmon was absolute. Somebody merely opened the debate for discussion, polite discussion.

[whippy]

castslikeaghille said:

whippy said:

Get a book on basic biology or look at Wikipedia, understand the basics and then you will realise why I described the idea as crack pot.

Hhhhmmm. Are you familiar with breeding race horses and Lee Wulff's analogous theories relating to reasons for Atlantic salmon taking?

Regards

CLaG

I only got as far as linking Mr Wulff's capabilities for catching salmon on the dry fly during a trip to the Dee with the waste products of a race horse, I got to the equation of E=Mc but stopped before getting to the squared bit. I feared the consequences of mixing methane and E=Mc squared!

[Fruin]

Whippy, and the relevance is?

[castslikeaghille]

whippy said:

castslikeaghille said:

Hhhhmmm. Are you familiar with breeding race horses and Lee Wulff's analogous theories relating to reasons for Atlantic salmon taking?

Regards

CLaG

I only got as far as linking Mr Wulff's capabilities for catching salmon on the dry fly during a trip to the Dee with the waste products of a race horse, I got to the equation of E=Mc but stopped before getting to the squared bit. I feared the consequences of mixing methane and E=Mc squared!

That's interesting, you dismiss what you admit you don't know (I detect a tediously familair pattern to this). Ok, so perhaps Wulff was slightly more erratic as a pilot than a fisher, but I think most people would agree he wasn't a 'crack pot' when it came to atlantic salmon.

To cut a short story long, Wulff's theory on the decline of Atlantic salmo catches was that salmon strains were no different to racing horse strains; you breed out the impurities. So with salmo the impuritiy was the porpensity to take a fly/bait. Hence with the wholesale slaughter for much of the 20th Century all we did was create a very pure line of salmon that were disinclined to take. Added to that the excess of netting, habbitat destruction, pollution etc etc result is we are where we are.

Now, of course, with catch and release being far more prevealant, we are creating a salmon race of cart horses who exhibit that most impure characteristic - the desire to be stupid enough to take.

This is, of course, anacdotel. However, with the dismal record of fishery scientists over the last 50 years I wouldn't, as you have, nail my colours to their mast either, far less call people crack pot for disagreeing with the discredited. And as for quoting Wikapedia as authorative gospel........on anything other than film credits, and even then....


Regards

CLaG

[altmor]

Very well put CLaG, and if you ask me, there's one dollop of horse manure too much in Whippy's irrelevant E=mc theory.

Well Whipps, if you can keep it relevant to the thread, great let's hear it, contrawise old chap, it's back to the stables for a bit of mucking out.

Personally, I'm with Martin on this one, the more we catch (and kill) takers, that genetic strain's numbers are reduced resulting in less fish caught in future seasons albeit the numbers of fish within a system could stay relatively the same. A system will after all support an optimum number of fish, the "take up" being made up of the non taking strain when the "taking" strain diminishes.


Altmor.

[minitube]

When Ghillying in the past at times I could spent hours form a vantage point watching guests flies swim over vast numbers of salmon and grilse and tell them what was happening. It is amazing to see how many fish are interested and moved to inspect the fly without taking or without the angler noticing anything. Almost all fish are aware of the flies presence and while not all take many are interested to a greater or lesser degree. Many turn away after swinmming to within a foot or two of the fly. A great many are somewhat interested especially initially and then loose interest. Interest is resumed especially if the fly is changed to one of a different colour. The percentage of fish that take to those that show interest is very small. The bottom line is everyone is moving a lot more fish than they ever realise.

[feroxfan]

what does lee wulff>s theory have to do with today? nearly 60 years old ! it means nothing.
all salmon are takers ,maybe not today or next week but the time comes they take,how can we prove that wrong we cannot! reliying (sorry for spelling know its wrong but) on old masters is nothing short of absurd, if you where a doctor would you rely on information from 60 years ago ?of course not.how you can quote stuff from wulff,faulkus e.t.c is beyond me it has no relivance to today , are you still using the same flies you used 20 years ago? are our grilse getting later each year ? you are not using the same flies because you think your new ones are better ,but if salmon are the same and thry where caught in their 1000sd why change? because samon have changed. takers or non takers !all you experts ought to think a little more . lee wulff says i should coco

[castslikeaghille]

feroxfan said:

what does lee wulff>s theory have to do with today? nearly 60 years old ! it means nothing.
all salmon are takers ,maybe not today or next week but the time comes they take,how can we prove that wrong we cannot! reliying (sorry for spelling know its wrong but) on old masters is nothing short of absurd, if you where a doctor would you rely on information from 60 years ago ?of course not.how you can quote stuff from wulff,faulkus e.t.c is beyond me it has no relivance to today , are you still using the same flies you used 20 years ago? are our grilse getting later each year ? you are not using the same flies because you think your new ones are better ,but if salmon are the same and thry where caught in their 1000sd why change? because samon have changed. takers or non takers !all you experts ought to think a little more . lee wulff says i should coco

Ok, firstly, to claim that absolutely everything written by anyone in the past has no relevance today is a bit far fetched. If you knew much (or anything) about Lee Wulff you would know much of what he practiced and said was 40 - 50 years ahead of his time However, the contra is also true. There was a poster once on this board who claimed everything you could ever learn about salmon fishing has been written - the end.

Salmon are like almost every other creature on the planet; as a species they adapt and evolve over time, and we as anglers should do the same. Yes there are changes in the patterns of certain runs, but that does not mean the salmon has fundamentally changed.

Now on to the specific of salmon taking behavior. "All salmon are takers", and your evidence is? Rather than speculating about what we don't know, let's focus on what we do.

1) Salmon don't feed in fresh water, although they can be observed from time to time killing flies, small fish and even anglers baits with their mouth.

2) Although crude, through tagging and fish counters we know anglers generally account for approximately 5-10% of salmon that enter a river

3) In the 80's there was a fad for stocking still waters with salmon. As I recall there was even one that created a dough nut shaped lake that flowed artificially in order to try and replicate a river. Ask anyone who ran one of these and they'll tell you that put a 100 rainbows in and you'll catch almost all of them. However, with the salmon the return was woeful - see 2 above, and that was one of the reasons (and not the only one) why this type of fishery never caught on because the cost was too high, because the fish didn't take.

Now the above doesn't prove anything beyond doubt, but it is indicative to suggest that either:

1) Salmon have such a rare propensity to take that the 5-10% figure reflects luck and persistence that the anglers was there at the right time and place that the salmon was in the mood to take.

or

2) Some salmon, for whatever genetic reason, have a behavior pattern that makes them more aggressive or inquisitive and hence are more likely to try things out with their mouth.

The problem with 1 is it relies on the fact that all salmon are genetically identical and will react the same way over time. However, we also know from scientific research that all salmon are not identical, albeit very similar. So that takes us back to 2, or something like 2, which is logical from both an observed and researched basis. If you agree that then what Lee Wulff had to say makes sense.

Finally, your comment about doctors is interesting, and suggests you know less about current medical practice than Lee Wulff. The use of maggots in treating infection in wounds is on the increase. Similarly, mouth cancer specialists increasingly use leeches to assist with coagulation on organ replacements and re-builds. Systematic use of maggots was quite common in WWII which was about.. 60 years ago give or take.

Regards

CLaG

[colliedog]

It's a bit more than 60 years since Newton worked out out gravity and Feroxfan's argument still falls from the sky like the proverbial apple...........hmmm.

The fact that salmon have developed different behaviors in different rivers is well illustrated by the dry fly example - why do eastern canadian salmon take a bomber like a chalkstream trout when it is so often shunned by their Scottish cousins?

It seems a perfectly reasonalble suggestion that abnormal tendencies in salmon (ie to replicate a feeding response in freshwater) could be genetically driven and therefore altered by selection (natural or un-natural).

BTW - I have boxes full of modern salmon flies - it's part of the fun, but I still catch as many salmon using willie gunns, silver stoats and various othe "obsolete" patterns.

REgards

CD

[whippy]

castslikeaghille said:

There was a poster once on this board who claimed everything you could ever learn about salmon fishing has been written - the end.

What a cracker jack, can you direct me to the original post? I would love to read that one.