We received some encouraging news from Scottish Power today that it looks as though we may well receive some funding towards our Loch Doon project. Nothing is certain yet but we are certainly in with a shout. We will continue to seek support from other partner organisations such as the Forestry Commission and SEPA who have agreed to share their pH data base with us.
To help this project along the way we returned to the area today, caught, anaethetised and clipped a few fry and parr for management purposes. This will help us identify salmon that have been naturally produced, from hatchery reared fish in the years ahead as we monitor their progress through the loch and fish pass as smolts and hopefully back again as adults.
Clipping adipose fins for management purposes after the fish have been knocked out in a bath of anaesthetic
Brewster helping to scatter the fish once they were released back into the burn
We will be relying on anglers to return any salmon they catch that have a clipped adipose fin in several years as these should be the future spawners above the dam. Start looking for them from 2017/18 onwards. There won’t be many but every one will count. We will need to secure adequate funding though for the project to go ahead as planned but today may just have saved us from having to wait a further year for results. All going well we will be inserting pit tags into parr next year which will then allow us to automatically record their passage down through the ladder as smolts and back up again as returning adults. It’s going to be an interesting project of it goes ahead.
Beautifully marked trout caught on the Garple just downstream of Loch Finlas Dam
I’m sure many of the trout produced in the Garple burn will drop down to Loch Doon. There’s certainly no shortage of these beautiful wee fish in all the burns surrounding the Loch
Whilst on the Garple, out of curiosity mor than anything, we fished a site just below the Finlas dam. The trout population was tremendous and the colure spectacular. Nothing very big but plenty of them. We really just wanted to check whether salmon reached the dam or not. It appears not…. at the moment.
