We have tried to help a local film maker secure some underwater shots of salmon spawning over the last couple years and today was the latest attempt in the Fiddich. Previous attempts have been foiled by technical gliches, high water or lack of fish. However today we were lucky with everything coming good together. We soon located some spawning fish, deployed the cameras then went on to complete a redd count in the lower Fiddich between Popine and Newton bridge.
When we came back to the cameras they were surrounded by salmon, some of which were weaving in and around. Hopefully Bernard will have got some good footage but were the cameras still running when the fish came back to the redds?
Several salmon in and around the static Gopro underwater video cameras. The cameras were fixed to heavy stands which were positioned to overlook the redds.
Salmon redd in the Fiddich. We counted about 36 salmon redds between the railway bridges today, much less than in former years but enough to produce an adequate fry population in this part of the Fiddich at least.
Andy Logan, an ex Spey ghillie accompanied us today on the redd count . He used to fish the Fiddich in his younger days and knows it intimately. Andy’s biggest fish from the Fiddich was a 17.5lb fresh fish in July; that must have been fun on a 6′ spinning rod! Andy reported large fish were always scarce in the Fiddich as it was mainly a grilse river. However I’ve seen a few good fish there this year and we came across this big corpse today. He must have been equal to Andy’s best in his heyday. It was completely covered in fungus but even now its goodness will contribute to the river. You will have noticed that I have grown a cocker spaniel on my right foot!
There was quite a hard frost last night and a lot of dead branches were covered in thick frost.
Frost covered dead branches
Not sure what the name is for this type of frost? Wikipedia doesn’t describe it specifically. It looks like soft downy feather; I think it should be called feather frost (damn it, just checked Google, that is what it is called!)? It produces fantastic patterns of ice from what must have been waterlogged wood.It would be good to see some time lapse photography of feather frost forming.
Looking forward to seeing some clips from the videos!
Spey Fishery Board
