Should catch and release be compulsory?

COLUMN: Northern Lines by Dr Keith Williams

For most people, their work and their pastime are two very different things – but for fish ecologists the two are often interwoven.

Despite work commitments severely limiting my time on the river during August, angling was never too far away from my thoughts. As part of a Marine Scotland Science national programme, the Kyle Fisheries team have been weighing, measuring and taking scale samples from salmon angled on the River Oykel.

The information gathered will ultimately be used to help derive river gradings. The annual publication of these gradings for all listed rivers in Scotland has proved controversial given that they dictate whether salmon can be killed within the fishery in question, or whether all those caught must be returned to the water.

In essence, the gradings assess estimates of the minimum number eggs believed to be required to populate a river system against the number of eggs estimated to be provided by returning adult salmon. In the absence of a network of fish counters, the latter is extrapolated from rod catch data and estimates of the size of fish plus how many eggs the females are likely to produce. It is a far from exact science.

Proposed gradings for the 2023 season have just been published and there is the usual consultation period during which fishery managers and the public can express their views. Additionally, views are now being sought as to whether catch and release of all salmon should be made compulsory across Scotland irrespective of the conservation status of individual rivers.

In my view the adoption of such measures in the near future would represent a retrograde step.

In the Kyle of Sutherland, recent years have seen the percentage of salmon released by fishers climb to over ninety-nine percent in response to growing concerns about declining abundance. Only a few fish that cannot be revived are retained. This has largely been achieved on the back of a voluntary approach, without recourse to more draconian measures.

For most salmon anglers it is no hardship to release fish – provided that it has a realistic chance of survival. I suspect that it is a very different thing to watch a dead fish float off into the distance.

Should blanket measures be put in place then I fear that some fishers may cease fishing for salmon entirely rather than risk such a scenario. Surely, we should be aiming to address the many other pressures our rivers face rather than adopt such an approach?

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