Home

October 1999

June 2000

Schools Project

November 2000

Fishing the Annan

River Annan & District Salmon Fisheries Board

Newsletter, January, 2001

 
Habitat Improvements

The River Annan habitat improvements scheme is growing larger. The annual capital spend has been increased from £25,000pa in 1998 to £45,000pa in the year 2000. There are plans to increase this again in 2001 to £70,000pa. This would not be possible without the increasing support of our sponsors and an increase for money that the fisheries owners are putting into the scheme. Another development is that a smaller scheme is being developed for implementation on the Kirtle Water. This small river enters the Solway a few miles East of the Annan. it used to have a significant run of sea trout a few grilse and was renowned locally as a good brown trout fishery.  In recent years, it has declined markedly due to a number of reasons, primarily habitat degradation.  

Fencing
The fencing of water margins along the Annan is continuing apace. This year we will be fencing off parts of the Annan Water, the Dryfe and the Water of Ae and the Mein. Altogether over 40Km of fencing will have been completed by the end of this financial year. This work will over the years continue to boost the numbers of young fish within the system, it will however take time to show through to anglers catches as the improved areas are only a small proportion of the river length that is available to salmonids.

Intense grazing like this along the water margins of the Kirtle Water massively reduces the productivity. Fencing is simple but very effective at reversing this.

In stream/ Bank side Works

In the late winter of 2000 large areas of the lower Moffat water that were suffering from acute erosion had willow revetments installed on them. These revetments are living structures that bind the soil up and reduce the flow levels at the edge of the bank. It is important to ensure that the erosion on the catchment is not too acute as this leads to an extra silt burden in the watercourse that reduces the survival of eggs in the gravel. Erosion is however a natural process that shapes a river and provides for the diverse range of stone sizes that young salmonids need to thrive. Erosion control only takes place when sufficient evidence is present to show that it is detrimental.


In the top left. A substantial amount of bank had collapsed in one flood (over 50m long and 6m deep) and deposited a large amount of sediment in the watercourse lower down. This had a direct effect on the production of fry below the erosion area.

Bottom left Twisted live willow whips placed into the banking soon grow and create a living shield to the bank. 

Top and bottom right. This structure will rapidly naturalise and as well as securing the bank provides cover for fish.

The soft engineering approach that the Annan DSFB is taking to bankings is in the long term more sustainable than the more common approach of using diggers to move the river gravels around to remove the pressure from the bankings. When work has proceeded with gravel excavation the normal outcome is that it is an annual programme to repair flood damage is needed. It is also very damaging to the fish stocks as invariably what is left is a riverbed which is very uniform and lacking in cover.

Fish Stocks

Salmon

The Fisheries Board advised recently that all salmon caught before the month of June should be returned. This was a voluntary measure and it appears that people who where fishing have abided by this and the few spring salmon caught this year have been returned. To reinforce this message a leaflet has been produced in conjunction with all the fisheries interests around the Solway firth that outlines the differing stages that salmon go through when they enter freshwater as adults. This leaflet has been produced by the Solway Partnership and is available from them by telephoning (01387) 247010 and asking for Mary Lewis. All the anglers that are issued a ticket for fishing on the Annan will receive a copy.

Early indications of the salmon run for 2000 are that it was better than the all time low of 1999 but was still sporadic. Neighbouring rivers appear to have faired much better and there certainly does not appear to be a lack of fish in the river now at the end of the season. There could be many reasons for this, but a likely one would be the differences in the flow during the summer. The graphs below illustrate this.

Q95 is a figure derived from flow data that indicates the flow that the river will be above 95% of the time. In the two graphs above it can be seen that on the Nith there were more frequent spates throughout the summer and early autumn of 2000. The flow of the Annan also became very low in comparison to the Nith during the summer months.

The high water at the end of the season meant that although large numbers of salmon were entering the river they were unavailable to anglers as they sprinted through the river and into the upper tributaries very quickly. However some excellent fish where caught on most beats.

Two fish caught by Mr. Joe Black (on the left) on November 14th at Annan.  Although the Annan has a very late closing time, the quality of the fish available to anglers at this time of year is excellent. Anglers must however act with caution as in amongst fish of this quality will be fish in their full breeding dress.

Trout 

The Annan again had excellent runs of sea trout in 2000. Sea Trout are the most enigmatic of game fish with their numbers rising and falling over many years, often without any apparent reasons. In Scotland, much of the fisheries research has in the past been dominated by salmon so our knowledge of these fish is still limited. We do not yet have a full understanding of where they feed when they go to sea, some fish appear to stay fairly close to our shores whilst others wander far further and are true oceanic fish. We do not know what causes some brown trout to become sea trout and causes other fish to stay in their home river. Trout populations behave differently in different arrears with differing growth patterns and lifestyles, indeed in large rivers there may be separate stocks of fish all behaving in distinctly different ways. Until we can answer these questions more fully, it is difficult to manage the stock. To try answering some of these questions the Annan has been involved in a scale-sampling programme over the last few years. The data generated is of tremendous use to the whole of Scotland as it provides an opportunity to investigate the lifestyles of various sea trout populations around Scotland.

The chart on the top left demonstrates how fertile the Annan is as a river. Nearly ½ the sea trout caught in 2000 came from smolts that had only spent one winter in freshwater before migrating to sea. This is only possible because of our relatively mild climate and rich insect life that is found in many parts of the river. 
The chart on the top right demonstrates that this fast growth is repeated once the sea trout go to sea. The 0SW fish are Herling (Finnock) which are often maturing when they enter the river. 
The majority of the spawning stock is however made up of 1SW fish and first time spawners (bottom left). 
A significant number, 13%, of the sea trout sampled were spawning for the second or third time (bottom right).

Grayling

Although grayling are not strictly the business of a District Salmon Fisheries Board, the Annan DSFB believes that to manage the stocks of fish within the river all fish species should be considered. The Annan does have an excellent stock of Grayling that grow to very large sizes in some areas. During October 2000 the Grayling Society held its annual general meeting in Dumfries. This was followed by a fishing day split between the Annan and the Eden. This was a valuable opportunity to obtain data about the numbers of fish and sizes in various sections of the river. It was also an opportunity to determine what the catch was compared to the effort put in by the anglers as there was a known number of people taking part who recorded the hours that they fished on any given day.

 

 

 

 


 

 

Home