Catch statistics

[phl]

I see that the EA has recently posted the salmon and seatrout catch statistics for 2018 on its website: see https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/salmonid-and-freshwater-fisheries-statistics

They make depressing reading: I've been tracking this for years, and 2018 seems to have been the worst ever, for seatrout as well as salmon. However, if you remember, 2018 was a very bad drought year, so hopefully the figures reflect that rather more than a catastrophic decline in stocks.
Having said that, there's no doubt there has been a decline over the years. However, the picture is uneven; in some rivers seatrout numbers have held up pretty well. To cheer you up, below I have a table of figures below for some Welsh rivers that are doing relatively well. The figures are 5-year averages over the 20 years to 2014, then the average for the 3 years to 2017, and finally the 2018 count. As you can see, for the Clwyd, Dee. Dovey. Glaslyn and Ogwen, the 2010-14 catch average was actually quite a lot higher than in any of the 3 previous 5-year periods. Since 2014, there has been a dip in most cases - but even so, the 3-year average up to 2017 is higher than any of the previous periods for the Conwy and Ogwen, and better than the 1995-1999 average for all 6 rivers. Even in the disastrous drought year of 2018, three of these rivers did better than in 1995-99.
Yes, I know; I've been very selective in choosing these cases; for most rivers the picture is much more gloomy. But these do, I hope, show that the picture is not necessarily one of overall decline; if some rivers are continuing to produce good catches, then there is hope that others may recover too, if we can learn more about the reasons for the differences.
Something to ponder while we can't fish!

Paul

	1995-1999	2000-2004	2005-2009	2010-2014	2015-2017	2018​
Clwyd	846​	992​	766​	1159​	979​	324​
Conwy	367​	528​	443​	475​	669​	402​
Dee	173​	278​	243​	522​	469​	225​
Dovey	1329​	1769​	1318​	2085​	1813​	565​
Glaslyn	473​	564​	563​	677​	464​	412​
Ogwen	112​	137​	132​	202​	245​	191​

 

[T7]

Thanks Paul. Do you have figures for other rivers and other years as well? I keep a log of Scottish salmon catches but haven’t had chance to put together sea trout historical data

 

[phl]

All the raw figures are taken from tables in the annual reports from the gov.uk site referenced in my post. Unfortunately, this now only holds reports going back to 2010, although the tables give catches for the previous 10 years, so that takes the record back to 2000. The earliest report I have a copy of is for 2000, with tables recording data back to 1990; I've attached this here.
The 5-year averages above were calculated by me, and so may be inaccurate.
There is also a really interesting report on Salmon and Sea trout Statistics for 1951-1990, which can still be found on the web:

https://www.cefas.co.uk/publications/files/datarep38.pdf

Paul

 

[T7]

Thanks a lot!
Tj

 

[elwyman]

Thanks for posting the link. The 2018 catches make depressing reading, but I recall it was a very dry summer, we only got some rain right at the back end.
This graph is quite sad to see, it shows the fishing effort has declined about 65% since 1994: