River Tyne fish-counter in a spin with record June salmon and sea trout run

publication date: Jul 11, 2008

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author/source: Colin Bradshaw, Salmon Editor

The Environment Agency’s fish monitoring station on the river Tyne, the best Atlantic salmon river in England and Wales, has recorded its best ever June salmon and sea trout run.  Over 4,000 fish took the fish-pass in June which passes the previous June record set in 2004 when a record 48,668 fish ran up the river over the year.

Riding Mill fish monitoring station on the Tyne. The lights (foreground) help the video images. 

The fish monitoring station at Riding Mill near Hexham, some 30 miles inland, also video-records all movement over the fish counter and they use this to determine the proportion of sea trout to salmon. This evaluation has not yet been made for June but the Environment Agency do confirm that sea trout form the bulk of this summer run.

With an average size of 4lb the Tyne sea trout offer fabulous sport and today we heard of one beat on the South Tyne whose fishers hooked 17 sea trout before a rise of water killed the sport.

A big flood is now in the Tyne and this will encourage further runs of summer fish to enter the river and move quickly upstream. This rain is very good news for the fish as the lower estuarine waters below Newcastle can still pose severe health risks for slow moving fish.