Here are some graphs made from EA raw data showing declared rod catches and Durham counts on the Wear from 1979 to 2019.
The rod catches start from a fairly low base in 1979 and then steadily rise with the sea-trout catches peaking around 2001 – 2003 before steadily falling to 2011 and then more dramatically to 2019. The salmon catches rise more slowly peaking around 2010 – 2013 and then also falling dramatically to 2019. Sea trout catches are about double those of salmon up until 2011 when the catches of both species become more equal and in the second graph you can see that the combined catch peaks between 2010 and 2013.
The fish counts start low in 1994 and quickly rise to a peak in 1999 of 27658, staying very high until 2003 when they dip for a few years by about 50% until 2010/2011 when they increase to over 20000. There is then, apart from a spike in 2015, a gradual decline to 2019 when only 4704 fish were counted. The drop in counts from 2011 to 2019 is approximately 79%. This appears to be catastrophic as some have said.
What is interesting is how the rod catches compare with the fish counts which are of course combined. I have read many times in books and magazine articles that typically around 10% of the fish that run up a river are caught on rod and line. I don’t know how this percentage was arrived at but like many things in angling it just seems to be one of those nuggets that has been accepted as fact. You would therefore expect the graph for the combined rod catch to roughly shadow the graph of the combined fish count but at a 90% lower level, but this is clearly not the case.
The first year of counts was 1994 but there was obviously a problem because the catches were higher than the counts. In the next year, 1995, the catch was 1219 and the count was 13543 which makes the catch 9% of the total, so far so good. Then it all goes haywire as in 1999, the highest counts on record, the catch was only 5.5%, and by 2013, another good count year, the catch increased to just over 26%. Last year, the lowest count on record, the catches are a healthy 1437 fish which is 30.5% of the total fish count through Durham.
Now this is all very simplistic and there are a lot of variables at play here but what is going on? Seasonal variations in water level will have had an affect so that in some years the fish were easier to catch but this wouldn’t account for the huge variation in catch rate. Back in the seventies and eightees I think that there was probably a lot of under –reporting of catches as some anglers were fearful of their rents and subscription fees going up so the catch rate would have been artificially kept down. The amount of rod pressure would also make a big difference, basically more rods fishing would catch more fish, but here we seem to see the opposite with these figures. I don’t have data for rod days fished but I do know that on all of the club waters that I fish there has been a significant drop in the number of members. In one of the clubs the membership has dropped by nearly 50% in the last five years so if anything the proportion of fish caught to fish counted should be going down but it has done the reverse. Whilst the counters are recording fewer fish each year through Durham the angling catch rate is getting higher and higher.
Other possibilities are that the fish themselves have become a lot more aggressive in recent years and are easier to catch or that the skill of local anglers has suddenly improved but I think these are highly unlikely.
I think the simple answer is that the fish counts are inaccurate and cannot be used as an indication of the number of fish running up the river. I think that there is some truth in Beefly Dave’s comments regarding the sea-trout only using the counter in low water and also that the salmon aren’t recorded later in the year in higher flows. I also agree with God’s comments about the high proportion of fish jumping the wall instead of using the counter as I have been witnessing this myself for decades.
