Post by BarleBlanker on Feb 12, 2016 16:38:24 GMT
From the late 1950's to 1976 a tagging project was run by MAFF on the river Axe. The idea was to trap, count and tag every salmon and sea trout going either upstream or down. This included kelts and smolts, although the sea trout counting and tagging dropped off to a degree in later years. The tagging and even accurate counting of school peal was abandoned after a while.
In the 1990's a copy of the monthly reports from this trap fell into my hands. Amazingly the reports are marked confidential or restricted. I made a copy and so did a couple of friends but as far as I know they have never been published. There seems little point in leaving them languishing on my laptop so I thought I'd stick them on here. Where better than the Devon Rivers forum Axe section? I don't think the confidential/restricted classification applies any more!
As I wasn't born until 1968 I have no first hand knowledge of the trap and I've never even seen a picture of it but I have read the description of it. The trap was designed to catch everything, there was no way round it going either upstream or down unless it had to be lowered for extreme flood conditions.
There are tales told of hotels in the area that never had salmon off the menu... There are also stories about tagged smolts getting hung up in fishing nets in their hundreds when certain types of tag were used which tangled in nets that these little fish would normally pass through. Some salmon smolts were even branded with liquid nitrogen! So it seems the trap might not have been all good news for the Axe fish stocks.
On the other hand as the years go by the monthly reports talk of major pollution events in the river and also of tags being handed in from the high seas fishery of Greenland. So the Axe, never a prolific salmon river, was always going to struggle in the face of increased pressures all round.
In many ways the sea trout data is more interesting than the salmon data. There are some records of very big fish in spring and repeat captures of the same fish over a period of several years. Also note the numbers of roach recorded - all now gone.
So for those with an interest in this sort of stuff I give you the monthly reports for 1960 (later years to follow as I get around to it).
JANUARY & FEBRUARY
MARCH
APRIL
MAY
JUNE
JULY
AUGUST
SEPTEMBER
OCTOBER
NOVEMBER
DECEMBER
Andy
In the 1990's a copy of the monthly reports from this trap fell into my hands. Amazingly the reports are marked confidential or restricted. I made a copy and so did a couple of friends but as far as I know they have never been published. There seems little point in leaving them languishing on my laptop so I thought I'd stick them on here. Where better than the Devon Rivers forum Axe section? I don't think the confidential/restricted classification applies any more!
As I wasn't born until 1968 I have no first hand knowledge of the trap and I've never even seen a picture of it but I have read the description of it. The trap was designed to catch everything, there was no way round it going either upstream or down unless it had to be lowered for extreme flood conditions.
There are tales told of hotels in the area that never had salmon off the menu... There are also stories about tagged smolts getting hung up in fishing nets in their hundreds when certain types of tag were used which tangled in nets that these little fish would normally pass through. Some salmon smolts were even branded with liquid nitrogen! So it seems the trap might not have been all good news for the Axe fish stocks.
On the other hand as the years go by the monthly reports talk of major pollution events in the river and also of tags being handed in from the high seas fishery of Greenland. So the Axe, never a prolific salmon river, was always going to struggle in the face of increased pressures all round.
In many ways the sea trout data is more interesting than the salmon data. There are some records of very big fish in spring and repeat captures of the same fish over a period of several years. Also note the numbers of roach recorded - all now gone.
So for those with an interest in this sort of stuff I give you the monthly reports for 1960 (later years to follow as I get around to it).
JANUARY & FEBRUARY
MARCH
APRIL
MAY
JUNE
JULY
AUGUST
SEPTEMBER
OCTOBER
NOVEMBER
DECEMBER
Andy