Week 25 - Friends & fish

Jun 27

This week's blog will be in two parts.
1: Thoughts about the salmon
2: Week 25 update

If you are only into the update scroll down to the second part, but if you are interested in the situation about the baltic salmon spend a minute or two with part 1.

Part 1:

These days we get many news about the fishing in Scandinavia. Closed rivers, lack of fish and difficult fishing.

There is no doubt that the wild salmon are having a hard time no matter where you are looking. And no one seems to know exactly why?

A few elements in the Baltic sea could be; Warmer temperature in the sea, lack of herring and overfishing. We have said it before and will say it again; Everyone has to take responsibility in a case like this.

The politicians need to make long term environmental decisions.

The fishermen have to limit our kills and give back to the river.

History:

If we look at fishing in the rivers it goes way back and has been a thing for many thousand of years. Back in the days it was easier to catch the fish in the river than the sea, so we have to look at the fishing in the river when we talk about the history and the culture. It is a big part of the story alongside the rivers and many small towns are based on good fishing spots in the river.

Nowadays it gives social value to have good fishing in the river. As a local it's a great thing to be able to fish your home river and as a society it brings value from guests outside the city to come and spend money fishing the river.

Facts:

The salmon rising up torne river are tracked and have been for years. And when they count the smolt leaving the river when the adult fish has spawned. In that way there are some kind of track about the stock of fish in the river. But there are some issues with the way we maintain the stock and predictions these days.

According to our information it does not require many adult fish to maintain a certain level of smolt. So in reality that means that the smolt numbers migration from the river into the sea are in theory looking good, but if there are bad conditions for surviving in the sea and no food they will die. And since we don't look at the amount of fish going up the river it creates an information background about the salmon that are missing key details.

24/6:

Since 2009 we have tracked fish rising in the Torne river.

80 km from the junction between the Torne and Munio river is a counter that tracks how many fish are rising.

At this date 24/6 we will here go trough some facts about the rise:

  
    Fish passed 24/6
    Total number of the year:
  
    2009: 10438
    31780
  
    2010: 5089
    17221
  
    2011: 5390
    23076
  
    2012: 10508
    59606
  
    2013: 11677
    52268
  
    2014: 30350
    100210
  
    2015: 24954
    58356
  
    2016: 64142
    98309
  
    2017: 6196
    40952
  
    2018: 14189
    47028
  
    2019: 17387
    65520
  
    2020: 12337
    69149
  
    2021: 24825
    93121
  
    2022: 14197
    52030
  
    2023: 6914
    20260
  
    2024: 9741

Lowest year on 24/6 2010: 5089 fish and highest year: 2016: 64142

In total: Lowest year: 2010: 17221 and highest year: 2014: 100210

Average: 16770 fish passed the 24/6

This is just to show that it can vary a lot from year to year and the fish can rise at different times of the year. So we never really know how a season looks before it's over.

Over the year we can see that if we have from 80.000 fish and up passing the counter we have a good amount of fish in the river.

Our dream is to have a minimum of 80-90.000 fish passing the counter each year and then years with more fish. If we could have that stable amount it would change a lot for us working on the riverbank on this mighty Torne river.

Part 2:

A few years back we got a group together that did not know each other before they met at Kengis.

Now they are having dinner together and some even meet up before Kengis to do some pre fishing. That is special for us, that we can be a part of a gathering of people that have met via Kengis Bruk.

Fishing is still difficult, as all salmon fishing can be. We could see on the predictions that we would have a change in the water level and more fish going to pass Kengis.

And it all happened when the water started to drop.

The fish moved actively and the salmon feeling was in the air.