Its been a wonderful season at Kylemore, and fishery manager Nigel Rush reports on the last week, and rounds up the fishery news for the season.
The final 9 days of the season were hampered with low water levels. Anglers could “only” manage 6 salmon for the period for just 10 rod days, which gave a total of 221 salmon and 193 sea trout for 260 rod days.
The angling effort was down 12% on 2012, but resulted in a 60% increase in salmon caught, an extraordinary return. The sea trout catch declined by 29%.
Of the salmon caught, 152, or 69% were released again. Of the 69 salmon killed, 17 were of hatchery origin – not native to the system, so just 52 native fish were harvested this season. The draft nets accounted for 280 salmon.
The average weight this year was 4.63lbs, an increase of 6.9% on the 2012 average of 4.33lbs.
The overall catch per rod per day for salmon was 0.85, and for sea trout = 0.74. Adjusting these figures to allow for river effort only then 204.5 rod days produced 215 salmon… a staggering 1.051 fish per rod per day. Likewise, sea trout effort on the lakes when adjusted to remove the sea trout caught on the river as a by catch to salmon angling reads as 168 Sea Trout to 55.5 rod days giving 3.02 sea trout per lake angler per rod day.
The top three rods were as follows: Seamus O’Neil had 48 salmon for 14 rod days averaging 3.42 salmon/rod day, with his best day producing 5 salmon. Geoffrey Fitzjohn had 36 salmon for 15 rod days averaging 2.4 salmon/rod day – best day 6 salmon. Neil Spellacy had 20 salmon for 8 rod days averaging 2.5 salmon/rod day – best day 5 salmon. Some going!
The two best flies were the Black Shrimp, which accounted for 87 salmon, and the Cascade, which took 44 salmon.
The Lower River beat produced 74 salmon (33.5% of total catch); the Middle River produced 38 salmon (17.2%); the Upper River produced 53 salmon (24%); the Rock Pool Beat produced 50 salmon (22.6%), and finally the lakes produced 6 salmon (2.7%).
Many thanks to Nigel for the detailed end-of-season report.
