Major blow to Loch Leven anglers

By Ken Bell, angling correspondent

IN A major blow to angling, all stock­ing of Loch Leven is to cease and the num­ber of fish­ing boats—already cut to 30—is to be fur­ther reduced, Loch Leven Fish­er­ies announced yesterday.

It is under­stood that from next sea­son only half a dozen boats will be retained at the 3400-acre water, once dubbed the “Queen of Scot­tish Lochs”, and it will revert to being a nat­ur­ally stocked water as it was until 1983 when the hatch­ery opened.

Loch Leven has been the heart of Scot­tish angling since the first national cham­pi­on­ship was held there in the late 19th cen­tury and was the only Scot­tish venue for the twice-yearly Home Coun­tries Fly Fish­ing Cham­pi­on­ship until recently.

The final of the Scot­tish National Fly-fishing Cham­pi­on­ship, the world’s old­est national fly-fishing event, is also held on the loch, as are some of the earlier stages. But due to redu­cing returns over 10 years, anglers have been vot­ing with their feet and fish­ing elsewhere.

In state­ment Mr Jamie Mont­gomery, whose fam­ily owns Kinross Estate, said, “Faced with mount­ing losses totalling over £500,000 in the last five years, Loch Leven Fish­er­ies is now in a pos­i­tion where it is forced to announce a sig­ni­fic­ant reduc­tion in its angling oper­a­tion on Loch Leven from the end of the cur­rent season.

“The fishery’s hatch­ery and rear­ing ponds at Tar­hill on the north shore of Loch Leven will be closed down and decom­mis­sioned at the end of the sea­son. All the Loch Leven brown trout cur­rently being reared there will be released either dir­ectly into the loch or its feeder streams depend­ing on their stage of devel­op­ment. Loch Leven will revert to being a nat­ural brown trout loch, with its trout pop­u­la­tion depend­ent on nat­ural recruit­ment from the burns.”

He said the num­ber of clubs and indi­vidual anglers fish­ing Loch Leven had been declin­ing stead­ily over the last dec­ade but the rate of decline has accel­er­ated over more recent years partly due to the well-publicised prob­lems asso­ci­ated with the stock­ing of rain­bow trout which stopped in 2004.

He was grate­ful to the many indi­vidual anglers who con­tin­ued to sup­port the loch. Many clubs, how­ever, had decided not to hold their com­pet­i­tions there and this had had a ser­i­ous effect.

Mr Mont­gomery said he could, how­ever, under­stand the anglers’ point of view.

Loch Leven Fish­er­ies has also under­gone prob­lems, all out­with its con­trol, with the qual­ity of water that led to the first intro­duc­tion of rain­bow trout fol­low­ing “Scum Sat­urday” in 1993. Then a huge algae bloom, feed­ing on ever more phos­phates pour­ing into the loch from adjoin­ing agri­cul­tural land and the Kinross wastewa­ter treat­ment plant covered much of the sur­face in a bright green scum, in places inches thick, and also killed thou­sands of fish.

The intro­duc­tion of 30,000 rain­bow a year after this incid­ent ini­tially pro­duced an increase in sport, but in 2003 eye fluke hit the hatch­ery and many fish stocked had one or both eyes dam­aged by the para­site. That year catches plummeted and the fish­er­ies decided that as the nat­ive brown trout was more res­ist­ant to the para­site they would in future only stock the indi­gen­ous strain.

This year around 100,000 fish will be stocked, and the hatch­ery trays are full of fry, planned to be stocked next year.

Mr Mont­gomery admit­ted Loch Leven had found it dif­fi­cult to com­pete with the grow­ing num­ber of much smal­ler, better-stocked fish­er­ies. The num­ber of cor­mor­ants has not helped, a recent sur­vey show­ing they were eat­ing 42,000–123,000 trout—more than the num­ber being stocked at the time.

He added, “The Scot­tish Exec­ut­ive, on advice from SNH, have repeatedly turned down applic­a­tions for a licence to shoot cor­mor­ants, which increas­ingly find fresh­wa­ter fish­er­ies easier pick­ings than their tra­di­tional North Sea feed­ing grounds and the dam­age they cause is considerable.”

Up to 700 cor­mor­ants have been coun­ted on the loch in winter, feed­ing mainly on trout.

“By clos­ing the hatch­ery and rear­ing ponds, which cost in excess of £80,000 a year, Loch Leven will no longer be arti­fi­cially stocked from the end of the cur­rent sea­son. It is inev­it­able this will fur­ther reduce the num­ber of clubs and indi­vidual anglers wish­ing to fish on Loch Leven in 2007 and bey­ond,” he said. “Most of the 30-strong fleet of boats will no longer be required and will be dis­posed of next winter.

“But it should be stressed this is not the end of fish­ing on Loch Leven—a small num­ber of boats will be retained for next sea­son and bey­ond for those anglers still wish­ing to fish on the loch.”

There is always the hope that as trout num­bers pick up from nat­ural recruit­ment the num­ber of boats may rise. But these would not be the tra­di­tional oak and larch 19-foot clinker boats—a fea­ture of the fish­ery since it began over 100 years ago. Annual main­ten­ance costs of each boat run to sev­eral hun­dred pounds, so replace­ment boats will be of easier main­tained mater­ial like fibreglass.

Mr Mont­gomery said it was sadly ironic the announce­ment came when the loch is fish­ing as well as it has for many a year.

At the week­end 30 anglers tak­ing part in the Pure Fish­ing Loch Leven Clas­sic Pairs Com­pet­i­tion weighed in 351 brown trout aver­aging just over the pound, and returned a fur­ther 127, an aver­age of 17 trout per angler over the two days des­pite near gale-force winds.

“How­ever, the eco­nomic real­ity is such that the loch has to be allowed to revert to being a nat­ural brown trout fish­ery, as it was prior to 1983,” he said.

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