Opening Ceremony 2025
Tuesday 11 February, 9am
Come along and watch the Spey begin its new fishing season

As recently announced in the local media, we want to remind all our friends in the local Aberlour and nearby community to come and visit our opening ceremony for 2025. 

We will begin as usual at the Penny Bridge, Alice Littler Park, Aberlour starting at 9am

Richard Anderson will be our Piper for the ceremony and Reverend Donald Walker will give the blessing. We thank them for their support.

Our Guest of Honour this year is John Anderson, who will ‘open’ the river. John, a long-serving ghillie at Tulchan Estate, recently retired after 42 years of service. We wish John every happiness in his retirement. 

Car parking is available and please remember, if you are bringing young children, to supervise them at all times near to the River and within the car parking and surrounding area.

To help celebrate the start of the new salmon fishing season, drams of the new 11yo Aberlour Scottish Oak FInish from the 2024 Distillery Reserve Collection, will be served by the Aberlour Distillery Team.

Hot drinks supplied by the Aberlour Hotel will be offered during the opening ceremony, along with samples of Walkers shortbread.

The Spey Fishery Board is grateful to Aberlour Distillery, Walkers Shortbread and the Aberlour Hotel for their continued generous sponsorship of this event.

2018 Spey Electrofishing Report

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Described recently as the “Rolls Royce” of electrofishing reports the Mach 2018 version is now available see here.

The report details the timed salmon fry index surveys on the Spey mainstem, as well as in some of the major tributaries. The triennial programme of density based surveys was reduced due to the workload but we still managed to complete 106 sites including 30 for the NEPS National Electrofishing Programme Scotland .

The findings of the 2018 survey are presented in the traditional way with the results compared against a baseline published in 2005. This is a good way of establishing trends but perhaps not so useful for assessing population status against a potential maximum capacity for that site. The analysis of the NEPS will be different, here the findings from each site will be compared against a modelled benchmark figure for each location. The report on the 2018 NEPS survey is due from Marine Scotland Science in April 2019.

The 2018 survey was generally positive with high fry and parr counts in the mainstem, and in all the major tributaries. A record high parr count was made at a site in the Dulnain (125 parr in three minutes). In the Dulnain, Avon, and Druie the greatest improvement in counts was noted in the middle and upper reaches. The strong 2017 fry population has resulted in a healthy population of one year old parr in most locations, but there are also good numbers of older parr, fish which will produce big smolts from these upland areas.

The hot, and dry, summer weather does not seem to have had an adverse impact on our juvenile stocks, indeed they appear good, in upland sites in particular. In the Avon the parr counts were similar to 2013 but they were 20% larger. Fry counts were slightly lower than in 2013, although still good, but they were 23% larger at a similar time of the year. This should produce a good crop of large smolts in 2019/2020.

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