PICTURES: River Thurso in 'tip-top condition' as anglers mark start of 2023 salmon season
Keen anglers found the River Thurso in "tip-top condition" as the 2023 salmon season got under way on Wednesday with the traditional opening ceremony.
Piper Alasdair Miller led a group of about 20 from the Ulbster Arms Hotel in Halkirk down to the Comlifoot Pool, on beat four of the river, on a day of crisp winter sunshine.
John Drummond, the Perthshire-based estate manager for Thurso River Ltd, poured a quaich of whisky into the water to toast the season and a visiting angler from Cumbria was invited to make the first cast.
At 17 inches, the river was described by senior ghillie Geordie Doull as being at "optimum level".
"If we get it at this height all season long, we'll catch loads of fish," Mr Doull said. "If we had that every day the whole season we would be very happy."
Mr Doull reported that 2022 had been the best season for salmon on the river since 2019. Numbers rose by 155 from 633 across all beats in 2021 to 788 last year.
"We got enough water in September compared with the year before," he explained. "We caught an average of 100 a week for the last three weeks of the season, which helped us get to that total.
"We have a team in the Caithness District Salmon Fishery Board led by our scientific consultant, Alan Youngson, who is very well regarded, and he does the same sites each year to test the juvenile densities of the young salmon, and the juvenile density in the Thurso is perfect – nothing wrong with them.
"The river itself is producing everything it needs to sustain a healthy population. The problems are at sea – lack of feed, predation, drift nets out at sea... all these things that are completely out of our control sitting on the river bank.
"The stuff that we can control on the Thurso, we've got it exactly where we want it and it's in tip-top condition – habitat, juvenile populations, how we look after the adults when they come back from the sea.
"We were on a 96 per cent release rate last year. That's the way it is going now.
"The angler is doing his part in trying to conserve salmon stocks.
"Despite all the challenges out there, the Thurso and a lot of the Highland rivers continue to have strong runs of salmon in comparison to other places that are suffering problems. The one thing we ask for is a more balanced weather pattern in the summer.
"We're not wanting rain day in, day out. Just give us a good flush of water every three or four weeks – that's all we need, and we will get over 1000 comfortably in a season.
"We're in a cycle at the moment where we are getting more dry summers than wet summers. It has happened in the past and it will happen again, and we'll lose this cycle and get wet summers and start to catch over 1000 again in a season. It comes and goes.
"You only have to go back 12 years – we had our record-breaking season [in 2010] with over 3000 salmon. It was the first and only time in my life I got bored with landing salmon!
"I think the Thurso is still capable of that, with the right scenarios – the right weather conditions during the season, and if the fish make it back in one piece, not preyed upon or netted out at sea, and if they get a free run back home.
"You've got to be optimistic in the salmon-fishing world. If you are pessimistic, it's pointless doing it."
Visiting angler Francis Sandison said it was “very exciting” to be asked to cast the first fly of the season.
Mr Sandison (73), a retired lawyer from Carlisle, said: “It's a lovely day and the river is at a beautiful height. It looks absolutely super.
"There is 17 inches of water at the moment and it just looks perfect.”
He added: “I have fished every year since 2012 and I also fished for a number of years in the 1980s, so my association with the river is getting on for 40 years.”
