What would you consider a 'good season'?

simonjh98

simonjh98

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After a summer of excellent fishing on the majority of Irish, Scottish and English rivers with people calling it the 'Best year in years',

What actually defines a good season? How many salmon per season to your net personally would you consider a good year or fish landed by a beat?

It would be interesting to hear people's views on the topic from different parts of the UK and further, Every river system is different !

Do you consider this to be a standout season in short memory?
 
westie4566

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I'm with Pete above - will be happy if I even land a fish this year. Certainly the worst I've even known.

Lock down didn't help as we probably missed the bulk of any run, however even then the rivers I fish were on their bones and have pretty much stayed that way since.

However, even twice when I hit our wee spate river right, they just weren't there.
 
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mows

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Ok is now I would describe it.
I didn't manage to start really until 2 nd week in July.
Other than a fruitless day at Balmckewan and a washed out opening day.
Since then I've had 6 salmon and 8 seatrout. (Seriously missed the best of the seatrout fishing)
Had a good few on offs as well.
I've had a salmon or seatrout for about every 2 hours actual fishing on the Southie.
As per Westie, no salmon on my usually reliable spate river with some good water in August.
Average seatrout weight is 3lb and average salmon weight is only 4lb.
Biggest salmon 8lbs
Biggest seatrout 5.5lbs
Seen more fish than usual on the Northie until 6 weeks ago and not a fish since.
There has been a lack of water this year, but also looks like all runs are over.
I don't think I'll be doing that much fishing between now and the end of the season.

It's been a strange year!
 
scoops

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This season has been a non event for me, a tiny grilse on the Findhorn all so far
For the amount of fishing I do now and the waters I fish I’d be happy with a dozen grilse n salmon, past few years with exception of last season I’ve not had that,
A good season would be seeing plenty fish a landing a few, some water during the season would be a start here though
 
Jockiescott

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I know I'm different to most but this most certainly was not a 'good season'.

Most of the younger generation now have never seen a good season so this season may have appeared something exceptional to many.

I'm old enough to have seen and fished during the 90s. There simply is no comparison to this season and those years.

Yes, we had a decent run of fish in July. For about 3 weeks, I'll admit, it's a long time since I seen as many fish. I haven't seen a single fresh fish since then and the numbers of fish seen overall has been minimal.

There are plenty who have followed those fish to the very top end of the river and are hauling them off the spawning beds. Those people are getting big numbers of fish but it just isn't 'sporting' in my opinion, to say the least. For many of these people, they'll believe there's plenty of fish and it's been a successful year. For those who fished when large numbers of fish entered the rivers every month of the season, we used to see fresh fish along the river in November and December, this season has been anything but good.

Excellent July, extremely poor since that. 3 weeks doesn't make a good season in my opinion.

We can't even complain about water this year either.
 
Finglas

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Jockiescott said:
I know I'm different to most but this most certainly was not a 'good season'.

Most of the younger generation now have never seen a good season so this season may have appeared something exceptional to many.

I'm old enough to have seen and fished during the 90s. There simply is no comparison to this season and those years.

Yes, we had a decent run of fish in July. For about 3 weeks, I'll admit, it's a long time since I seen as many fish. I haven't seen a single fresh fish since then and the numbers of fish seen overall has been minimal.

There are plenty who have followed those fish to the very top end of the river and are hauling them off the spawning beds. Those people are getting big numbers of fish but it just isn't 'sporting' in my opinion, to say the least. For many of these people, they'll believe there's plenty of fish and it's been a successful year. For those who fished when large numbers of fish entered the rivers every month of the season, we used to see fresh fish along the river in November and December, this season has been anything but good.

Excellent July, extremely poor since that. 3 weeks doesn't make a good season in my opinion.

We can't even complain about water this year either.
Click to expand...

As someone who is probably one of the "younger generation" and who you would consider not to have seen a good season I'm wondering how good things were in the 90s? What would have made a good season then? Not that I am doubting you at all, just wondering how good the good old days were in comparison to now...

jamie
 
Jockiescott

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Finglas said:
As someone who is probably one of the "younger generation" and who you would consider not to have seen a good season I'm wondering how good things were in the 90s? What would have made a good season then? Not that I am doubting you at all, just wondering how good the good old days were in comparison to now...

jamie
Click to expand...

Basically fresh fish.

Huge runs of grilse in July into August, a wee lull then into September until the 'Harvest run' appeared. The best fishing there was on the river. Lovely shaped bars of gleaming silver around 8 or 9lb weight into October then fresh autumn fish.

Counters on my river counting upto 20,000 in a season rather than 2-4000 now.

Seeing fish entering pools, leaving pools... Seeing my neighbour going to the river at 8am and leaving at 11 to start his work shift after landing 7 fish. Lucky now to manage 7 in a season.

All this after commercial netting on the main system and levels of poaching that had many tearing their hair out.

People even complained of poor seasons then too. ?
 
Finglas

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Jockiescott said:
Basically fresh fish.

Huge runs of grilse in July into August, a wee lull then into September until the 'Harvest run' appeared. The best fishing there was on the river. Lovely shaped bars of gleaming silver around 8 or 9lb weight into October then fresh autumn fish.

Counters on my river counting upto 20,000 in a season rather than 2-4000 now.

Seeing fish entering pools, leaving pools... Seeing my neighbour going to the river at 8am and leaving at 11 to start his work shift after landing 7 fish. Lucky now to manage 7 in a season.

All this after commercial netting on the main system and levels of poaching that had many tearing their hair out.

People even complained of poor seasons then too. ?
Click to expand...

Thank you Jockie, really does sound like the good old days! It would be great to see it go back to times like that but what are the chances?

jamie
 
Jockiescott

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Finglas said:
Thank you Jockie, really does sound like the good old days! It would be great to see it go back to times like that but what are the chances?

jamie
Click to expand...

Naw I can't see it unfortunately. What the reason for it is, we'll never really know.
 
Loxie

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I would be content with 30, happy with 40 and delighted with 50. This year has been pretty poor for me and I'm on about 15. Covid messed up all my best fishing, then of the 2 remaining Scottish weeks the first was Ok but most of the fish had gone through and the second was cursed with very low water leading to very little salmon fishing. The West Country has been poor for me too. If it rains this week I might have a last go, if not my season is pretty much done. I might have a token day in December but probably not.

lit looks like Autumn fishing is pretty much a waste of time, unless you like catching stale fish which I don't really, these days. For a couple years I've been predicting the main runs of fish coming in late spring and summer and that looks like it's coming true. No doubt things will change again in due course.
 
Hardyreels

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As I get older my baseline seems lower. 15 years ago I would have picked some outrageous number that could have cast doubt on my grasp of reality. That is until you looked at the stated location where I reside. Back then 50 sounded like an OK week but 100 was better. I'm talking Pacific Silver Salmon with regard to those numbers. Kings were harder to come by but on a morning in 2013 I caught 13 of them in just under 2 hours......... Ah, those were the days.

The age thing? I've grown either jaded or lazy and I'm not sure which it is. Now I am happy with at least one per trip and after 7 or 8 I have grown tired of reeling them in. I am honestly considering the ultimate form of C&R fishing for next year, here's how it will work. I will go fishing each day as I normally would and will swing my tube flies until I capture a few beauties. I will then do a respectable job of obtaining images of said salmon and after they are released change my fly.

When I say change my fly I don't mean new size or color, no not that. I intend to take my fishing pliers and cut the hook at the bend about half way around the bend completely removing the point and barb. After doing this and after documenting the fact that I did indeed catch several fish prior to the adjustment I intend to finish up the day and will count each thorough stop of my fly caused by a fish as a caught fish. Best of both worlds for me because it is the success of fooling one and feeling him / her fully onto the hook that gets me off. The whole battle of reeling one in and the netting - unhooking and all that is stressful for me and even more so for the poor beast at lines end.

I think I've caught about 50 salmon this year and am currently trying to avoid them as I look for steelhead and rainbow trout. Ten years ago I'd have said this was terrible but with the runs week here I'm doing better than many and not really trying too hard at that. beauty day on Saturday but got only 2 small trout................ Water was up and carrying just enough dirt to make things nearly impossible out there. Just a week ago I was flown into a remote river where we caught some nice trout but not many of them.
 
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