December 2009 Kerryglencar

 

spent a day down in Kerry with Michael o shay i was looking for sum footage of wild salmon met Michael at about 11 in the morning and there we went to the lake section that he looks after .

Michael was collection eggs from the salmon and a couple of cock salmon to fertilize them . Mikel and his men netted a small section of the lower caragh lake and they let me in the  section they had cordoned off there were about 15 8 to 13 pound salmon and i got a small bit of footage of salmon swimming in in closed water .

when i got out of the water they pulled in the net and they took all the hen salmon with eggs up to the hatchery the took a couple of cock as well .

We went to the opposite side of the lake and put out the net again the salmon are very clever  if they here you or see you before the lads got the net down they would have swam off to deeper water

but we caught another 12 salmon there eggs will be hatched and crept until there good and strong and then they well be let off into the river system again about 60% of the fish that they caught were from there hatchery they cut off the little fin just above the tail so they know the ones that they relished they also caught a spring salmon in there nets they relished him .

Once they have got the eggs from the salmon and the smelt from the mails there are also released back into the river this area is oned privately and they rent out the holes that they have nicely setup for any fisherman that wants to catch a couple of salmon i had a great day down in Kerry and there is hope for the salmon yet but i think that this is the way forward 

 

  

Salmon how long will they survive in Irish Rivers

 

I have been trying to get film of Salmon last weakened in Water ford and in our local river out in Kilmaley but it is very hard to get any clips. 

I spent 3 and a half hours trying to get one on a reds this is the nest the salmon Scopes out with it tail to lay their eggs in. it seams that the amount of Salmon that are actually in Irish rivers sistem are  declining rapidly and their seams that wild Irish Salmon might not be in our rivers much longer if the polluting and the poaching from netting at sea or the gaff in the river continues.

 

There is a section of river in Kilmaley that always had a lot of Reds in the gravel beds I often counted 20 or so their when i was younger 10 years ago but with the last 3 years i have visited this sight to find no sine of any reds or salmon I think this is the same through out the hole Country and if there is Salmon their in decline.I fear for the survival of the Salmon the next 3 years will tell a lot

 

. I was not very happy with the lack of Salmon in a some  of  Munster rivers that clame to have a a good number  i was loosing hope in ever getting footage of this great fish. Whit a lot of help from people in the fishery board and John  we came to a lovely river in Tipperary where the gravely river bottom where just right for Salmon Spanning .

We got very good video of Swimming Salmon. I think that there is hope for the king of the river but it will take a lot of worker from us the Irish People to give them all the help that they need and they realy need help

                                                   

Life Cycle of Salmon

From around October to the end of January the Salmon make their way up to the Rivers and Streams to spawn. On their way they face many hazards on their journey up and if they survive, it is no picnic getting back.

 

                               Nest and spawning

The life of a salmon begins in streams - often head streams or streams close to the source of a river - where clear water flows over a bed of gravel. The female  (or hen salmon) finding a place where the current flows through the gravel, uses her tail to scoop out a hollow in the river bed this causes the flow of the river to eather speed up or slow over the nest.

  while the hen works the "cock" fish stays close, driving off any other males which may come too close. The hollow is about 20 centimetres deep and between 50 and 100 centimetres long and is called a redd.

All salmon spawn naturally in freshwater. Spawning typically occurs in the headwater and tributary streams of rivers, though it can happen anywhere in a river if the river bed is suitable or not the hen makes the disision where the nest is.

 

The migration to suitable habitat may commence up to a year before spawning takes place in autumn-winter, salmon stop eating when the enter the river sistem.

 

Using all their energy instead to reproduction. Usually the female salmon will excavate a depression in the gravel with her tail, and deposit her eggs into this. One or more males discharge sperm over the falling eggs to fertilize.

The eggs are then covered with gravel to a depth of several centimetres by the female. The parents then leave the eggs in the nest or "redd", and there is no further parental care.

 

The eggs hatch into little fish after about two months. These baby fish are called "alevins" and have soft, delicate skin. Except for their large black eyes they, too, are orange coloured.

Attached to the alevin's slender fish-like body is a balloon-shaped "yolk sack", full of rich food which the alevin digests while it grows. The alevin is a rather helpless creature, capable only of wriggling, and it remains in the comparative safety of the pebbles on the gravel bottom.

After a month the yolk sack has been consumed and the alevin, now nearly two centimetres long, has taken on a light brown, speckled colouring. It can now make its way out of the gravel to swim in the open waters. These small fish are called "fry".

                                                             Fry

The small fish must rise to the surface of the water to take a gulp of air with which they fill their swim bladder, giving them neutral buoyancy, which makes it easier to swim and hold their position in the water column. This critical period is therefore referred to as "swim-up"

Parr
and exposes the young to dangerous predators for the first time. Once they begin to swim freely (three to six weeks after hatching), they are called fry. Their survival is temperature dependant and heavily influenced by predation and competition for food.

 

Fry quickly develop into parr with vertical stripes and spots for camouflage. They feed on aquatic insects and grow for one to three years in their natal stream. Once the parr have grown to 10–24 cm in body length, they undergo a physiological pre-adaptation to life in seawater while still in freshwater, by smolting.

In addition to the internal changes in the salt-regulating mechanisms of the body, the appearance and behaviour of the fish also change. The smolts become silvery and change from swimming against the current to moving with it. This adaptation prepares the smolt for its journey to the oceans.

 

 This food is kept in the form of fat in the flesh and this is what makes the salmon such a very rich and good food to eat.

Some stay a sea for more than one year. These travel further and they include the ones which go to the feeding grounds off Greenland. These fish stay away for just under two years, giving them two summers of feeding on plentiful foods.

 

A few remain away even longer and there are records of salmon which didn't return for four years. Such fish become giants, weighing as much as 27 kilos. Why some salmon return after a year while some others stay away for longer is a mystery. In some rivers older fish are never seen while in others they are quite plentiful.

Some Irish salmon, called grilse will reach maturity after one year at sea and return to their river in summer time weighing from 1 to 4kg. If it takes two or more years to mature, the salmon will return considerably earlier in the year and larger at 3 to 15kg - becoming a highly prized fish but also a very rare one.

Salmon exhibit a remarkable "homing instinct", by which a very high proportion are able to locate their river of origin using the earth's magnetic field, the chemical smell of their river and pheromones (chemical substances released by other salmon in the river). A journey of up to 5000km makes salmon "the king of fish".

                                                 Kelts

Having spawned, the salmon are referred to as "kelts" or spent fish . Weakened by not having eaten any food since their arrival in freshwater and losing energy in a bid to reproduce successfully they are susceptible to disease and predators.

 Deat  after spawning can be significant, especially for males but some do survive and commence their epic jouney again. In exceptional cases, some Irish salmon are known to have spawned up to three times!

Salmon always try to return to the rivers in which they were born. How they achieve this is not known. All that can be said for certain is that it is a migratory instinct governing the way of life of this magnificent fish, but how it works is a mystery. One theory, similar to the one about migrating wildfowl, is that, in some way they are sensitive to and respond to the earth's magnetic field.

Great numbers of salmon swim close to the coast in some places making them easer to catch in neats. Many approach the north coasts of Donegal and Antrim and from there some swim to rivers all over ireland . Some are heading for Scotland. Salmon which pass along the coast of Mayo are mostly heading for the Moy and other nearby rivers, but some are returning to countries as far away as Sweden.

 

On these journeys they can travel at least 50 kilometres a day, but they spend a lot of time searching for their own river. Many enter wrong estuaries before finding the right one. How they find their way home eventually is not known for sure. They may recognise a particular smell from the water of the river they were reared in.

The instinct to return to the river in which it was born is so strong that if salmon eggs from one river are planted in another there is the risk that many of the young will not return. However, there are cases where the substitute river is recognised by the fish, and the salmon which have spent a year or two developing in a particular river, not that in which they were born, do succeed in returning to it. The need to return to the river of birth was discovered only a few years ago. Until that time eggs from various rivers were freely distributed to others. This is no longer considered good practice.

                       return  to the spawning ground

The youngest salmon to return do so in May after spending little more than a year away. As the summer advances more and more arrive, the greatest numbers in July. These salmon are all quite small, mostly between two and three kilos, and are called "grilse" or "peal".

 

Generally speaking the later they come the bigger they will be, as the late comers have had more time to feed at sea. Grilse may continue to arrive until about October. Besides grilse small numbers of "large summer fish" which have spent rather more than two full years at sea arrive in the same season. They are much bigger and generally weigh between three and five kilos.

Towards the end of December, "spring fish" begin to appear. These are about the same size as the large-summer fish. Although they have spent about six months longer at sea than the summer fish they have not had very much more time for feeding since the rate at which they feed in the sea decreases in winter.

 

Through January and on to May the spring fish continue to arrive, but they are never so numerous as grilse and in some rivers there are no spring fish at all. Moreover the number of spring fish varies greatly from year to year. For example on the river Shannon, over a period of 20 years, spring fish accounted for between 1.6% and 13.3% of total annual catches.
No matter what time of year they come most salmon wait in the river estuaries until the river floods. Therefore few salmon moves up river in dry weather, but do so very quickly when it rains

. They often snap at fish or insects or at lures which look like their natural food
When they enter fresh water salmon retain the silvery colour they acquired at sea. But they soon begin to lose this and acquire an irregular pattern of reddish brown markings, which help to camouflage them against a background of gravel or mud. Also back in the river the cock salmon's lower jaw develops a hook which is called the "kype". It becomes so big that he can't fully close his mouth. But the female keeps her neat streamlined form. When the fish