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  The river is getting so low now that the smolt trap is barely turning, although we are still catching fish. I timed the speed of revolution yesterday and it was taking 31 seconds to do one revolution whereas at the start of the project it was taking only 9 seconds....

  By the end of the week it was looking as if the smolt run was starting to tail off.  However the heavy showers on Friday resulted in a two inch river in the river level leading to our biggest daily catch so far on Saturday (why on the weekend, it took us all morning...

  It has been another week of high catches in the River Ayr smolt trap, with almost 2000 fish, despite the low water which is now just 2" above summer level. However, there was a small rise of 2" during the week which had an impact on water quality. The daily catch...

  As predicted it was a busy weekend with the smolt trap. Over 500 smolts were found in the trap on Saturday morning, 230 on Sunday and 360 this morning. The vast majority are salmon smolts with a relatively low proportion of sea trout.  The river level  is getting...

  The catches this week have increased rapidly. Monday 25 smolts Tuesday 77 smolts Wednesday 99 smolts Thursday 72 smolts Friday 322 smolts On Friday the average size of the smolts appeared to be smaller with more in the 115-140mm range. There was also a noticeable...

Heavy showers yesterday resulted in a 2" rise in the River Ayr today. This must have stimulated a run of smolts as we had one of the highest totals of smolts in one day so far. We are also starting to get a few smaller smolts now, they are around 115-120mm but still...

The River Ayr is getting low and catches of smolts are slowing down. This week we have been catching quite large salmon smolts in the size range 130 to 165mm. The scales show that they are all two year olds. As the river is so low we think that these smolts will be...

  In 2006 we operated a smolt trap in the River Doon where the largest salmon smolt  captured was 175mm. This morning in the River Ayr trap we found a big one of 180mm, a fair size for a salmon smolt.  Will this fish return as a large adult salmon? As far as I am...