Category: DAA News

A landing net has been found on the lower river and a black thermos flask at Kilbury. Please call the secretary for more details.

13/8

Robin Thorne reports a grilse of 4 – 5 lbs taken while spinning CC water last week. He saw a couple of others in ideal viewing conditions.

10/8/16

Last week’s rain brought the river up by around 4 ft. It didn’t of course last for long, but as it dropped and cleared Derek Myhill intercepted a couple of grilse of 4 and 5.5 lbs. Both fish were caught spinning the CC water. Angling effort appeared quite low, but it is to be hoped that reasonable numbers  ran on the spate as new salmon have been observed higher upstream.

One or two members have had good night fishing  , and there are currently a few decent shoals of (mixed) seatrout  visible. Photo to follow.

From the Totnes times ‘Peep at the Past’ feature:

100 Years Ago

Owing to thunder showers towards the end of last week, the Dart rose, and the salmon and peel were noticed on the move. The water is, however, again low.

Eight salmon have fallen to the rods, Mr Wright securing five weighing 47lb in all; Mr Churchward two, of 8Ib and 9lb; and Mr Willcocks one of 8ib. All the fish were taken with the worm. Mr H Searle had a couple of nice peel and some trout. Mr E Distin also took several brace, the fish being in capital condition.

23/6

The ‘unconfirmed’ salmon has been verified and was caught by Derek Myhill  from the same pool a few days earlier. The river is settling and coming into better condition for night fishing: one or two reports of success of late including a 5 lb fish from Hembury.

21/6

Robin Thorn caught an 8.5 lb salmon from Nursery Pool last Friday. There have been reports of another though so far unconfirmed.

 

Things seem pretty quiet on the sea trout front after a brief flurry of activity in the second half of May. Though a few have been caught, the general feeling is that the main run of ‘springers’ is over and has been somewhat disappointing. Quite a lot of disease has been witnessed and we have not got off as lightly as we had hoped. It remains concerning and we are not much the wiser.

 

Here are some smolts that were caught on the fish pass camera at TWP. It is unclear at the moment whether they are sea trout or salmon smolts. The v-shaped tail may not necessarily indicate salmon at this stage of development.

The fish near the camera look huge but you can see from the fish in the background and especially in the bottom photograph that they are indeed smolt-sized. The red strip is 600mm wide. Although good for species identification purposes, it is very difficult to assess the size of fish from a side view like this and it is hoped that in time an overhead camera may be fitted to make the task easier.

  

 

As many will know, the lifting of the recent emergency salmon bylaw was conditional on our adopting a code of conduct for salmon fishing, agreed with the Environment Agency.

For easy reference, a copy of the document now has its own page, also accessible from the ‘pages’ menu.

The new fish counter at Totnes weir is now up and running. Over two hundred fish have used the fish pass since the counter started working in April. The pictures below show a few of the sea trout that passed through the counter.

We hope to bring you video of this in the near future and a more accurate idea of numbers and size of fish.