Another week passed, not long to go now. Autumn can be a beautiful time of the year.

The river started around the two foot six mark and fell away all week finishing around six inches. The forecast is for some more settled weather with perhaps some heavy rain before the weekend but as usual it is hard to predict what Friday might bring. Temperatures remain quite high for September. The tides have peaked last week and there will be no new water till after the weekend.

Catches: The Gordon Castle beats again landed over fifty salmon for the week a mixture of older coloured fish with some sea liced fish as well. Delfur started the week with a rush but things slowed as the week progressed; they finished around the mid twenties. As usual Mark and the boys have been generous with their photographs’.

Further upstream there are still fish to be caught. Craigellachie had a handful. Wester Elchies again lightly fished but still managed seven. Both Carron and Laggan were around the double figure mark. Team Boathwick landing the majority at Carron. I have a few interesting pictures from Ian and Neil. The red marks on the first fish are caused by Caligus Elongatus, which are the other smaller sea lice. The theory is that there was a large infestation of Caligus, possibly brought in by mackerel. The time of the year is right so it seems a plausible explanation. Other rivers are seeing fish with similar marks.

Sandy Smith tells me that Buckie angler George Alexander had a fish estimated at twenty pounds from the Pouch but unfortunately the photographs were not too clear.

Grantown struggled a bit with the low water but still managed a handful of fish the best being a fish of around fourteen pounds from the Lurg.

Spey Fishery Board