Amat Newsletter

April 2005

I am studying a 100 years of fishing records at Amat to see if they can help in anyway with the objective of trying to get a migration path through the dam at Glen Beag above Deanich.

To-date I have looked at the records of the Conygham family who were here from the 1923 season until after the 1945 season.

 In those 22 years the water was not fished at all in August or September for a number of years. The vast majority of pressure on the stocks was applied to the early running fish the “Springers”.

The Conyhams had fishing competitions with Glencalvie. Lord C was a frequent guest at Cornhill. His son has told me that all the proprietors on the river fraternised and discussed the fishings. I doubt very much if the C disinclination to fish in August and September was trait or quirk unique to Amat. Much more likely, the water levels were not high enough for the sinking lines universally employed.

It is perhaps hardly surprising that the Spring element of Carron stocks has declined to a greater extent than the later running summer salmon and the grilse.

People in this era did not have the benefit of the scientific knowledge now at our disposal for management decisions. The downward drift of Spring fishing was noticed alright and is referred to as far back as Calderwood in early Edwardian days. The decline was usually attributed to the netting stations at Bonar and the inability of the spawners to get over the Glencalvie Falls to the point that only a few years ago people were saying that nothing ever got over these Falls and had to drop back and go up the Blackwater. This was a firmly held view in a number of quarters despite quite a body of anecdotal evidence to the contrary and despite the decline being a National trait.

Two areas in which science has been most helpful.

• Until recently, it was widely held that angling accounted for just a few percent of the stocks. Now we know that angling can account for more like half the Spring run and that the Springers are especially aggressive to the lure in their first weeks in from the sea. If the beats below Morel are let but not doing well it may well be that the fish are not there to be caught.
  
  
• DNA testing shows that there are genetically different sub species of  fish who are very territorial with something like 80% returning to their natal rivers and their natal area in that river. There will therefore be fish milling about below Falls in the heatwave who are there for the oxygen and have no intention of spawning above.