Salmon Research Report 2009

The 2009 report represents the first time the annual report of fish number from the Salmon & Trout Research Centre on the River Frome, Dorset has been produced by the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust Dorset.  In March 2009 we took over the running of the fish counter and employed the three research staff being made redundant at the nearby research facility, previously run by the Government-funded Centre for Ecology & Hydrology.

Counts of adult salmon running upstream in the 12 months between 1 February 2009 to 31 January 2010, recorded 602 fish. This is the third lowest adult count since 1985 and is lower than the 10-year average (1999-2008) of 876 fish. In addition to adult fish we also count parr in the river throughout the catchment and we mark over 10,000 of them each year with PIT tags. This represents about 10-20% of the total parr population. Parr numbers have been estimated for seven years and 2008 saw the third highest count.

We have also been counting smolts each year in April and May. We estimate that 10,913 smolts left the river in 2009, again, the third highest count since 2002. We again recorded the migration of parr down the river in the autumn. This seems to be an active migration but the fish are not yet physiologically adapted to go to sea. Our set up for counting on the River Frome will allow us to get to the bottom of this phenomena in future years.

Download the Salmon Research Report 2009 (9Mb PDF)