What happened in 2008?

Meteorologically, it was another volatile year – but instead of excessive rain at the start of the season, as in 2007, we had a major drought. While the rest of Britain was suffering with floods, in North Sutherland we had practically no rain at all.

The rivers all but disappeared, and the fish stayed at sea. In fact, not a single sea-trout was caught in the Loch during June, as you can see from the chart. But then the rains arrived, and the fish with them.
Catching them was not easy, though. Unusually high water levels combined with wet and windy conditions for much of July and August meant that time-honoured strategies often did not work.

Nevertheless, persistence paid off – and a comparatively small number of resourceful fishermen produced some fine results, the total for the Loch being 714, well up on the previous year.

Two things to bear in mind if looking at the Weekly Catch chart and trying to relate it to your own experience. First, the weeks shown relate not to calendar weeks, but to quarter-segments of the calendar month, which don’t exactly coincide.

Secondly, the 2008 weekly totals are slightly understated, as some of our tenants’ catch returns have still not been broken down by specific week in our database. This should not significantly affect the chart pattern, though.

Catch-&-Release

The reported catch-&-release ratio for Loch Hope sea-trout in 2008 was 2.92 to 1 (of the 714 caught, 470 were returned) which is acceptably close to our overall 3 to 1 target – although we would have preferred a bit of excess (last year’s ratio was 5.4 to one).

The specific guidelines are:
* All fish under 1.5 lb to be released
* All hen fish to be released after Aug 31st
* Barbless hooks recommended
* Subject to the above restrictions, two fish per boat per day may be kept.

We’d like to thank all our visitors for their help in making this flexible approach work so well.

Thanks for supporting the WSFT
The West Sutherland Fisheries Trust, under the direction of marine biologist Shona Marshall, continues its excellent work of gathering and analysing data, and advising fishery managers in our region. Many of our fishing visitors generously support this charity. If you would like to do the same, visit the WSFT website.