Each river has a conservation code, designed to create a balance between angling interests and maintaining a healthy population of fish. Every year, our Scientific Advisors review the year’s catch data and electro fishing results and recommend any necessary changes to the conservation codes.
Research shows that a high proportion of released fish survive, to breed and (possibly) to be caught again. The survival rate depends partly on anglers’ techniques for releasing caught fish. Below are guidelines to help anglers release fish successfully.
According to Marcus Walters of the Moray Firth Sea Trout Project, sea trout populations appear to have declined in all three of the Trust’s rivers. At the moment, there is little data to help explain this decline. One way forward is to analyse sea trout scales. From scales, scientists can determine smolt age, sea age, overall age, age at first spawning and number of spawning occasions. Marine growth performance can be ascertained by fish size at sea age.
The Moray Firth Sea Trout Project is asking anglers to collect sea trout scales from retained and released sea trout (while protecting the fish as much as possible). Please download Collecting Sea Trout Scales for how to carry this out safely, and where to send the scales.
The last formal research on Moray Firth sea trout scales was carried out in the 1920-30s by G. H. Nall, who looked at the scales of hundreds of sea trout from rivers all around the Firth. When the scale characteristics are looked at across a whole population they can provide vital information on the structure and behaviour of the stock. If we can collect reasonable numbers of sea trout scales from the Findhorn, Nairn and Lossie then we will be able to not only compare differences between rivers but also look at how the recent collections differ from G.H. Nall’s results and this may help us understand how the stock has changed and give some insight into what may be causing the decline.