This season is going badly for salmon angling on the Wye. Club Members so far have caught just 2 salmon and salmon numbers on the River as a whole are only 47% of what they are expected to be at this time of the year. So in a report for Natural Resources Wales there is a proposal to ban all salmon fishing on Welsh rivers and the includes the whole of the Wye including the parts that flow in England.

Draconian measures have already been taken against anglers on the River by restricting fishing methods to the extent the very few anglers fish for salmon at all. The NRW seem reluctant to take measures that have been tried elsewhere in the UK, such as hatcheries and are resistant to scientific peer scrutiny according to the Wye Salmon Association.

Responding to the NRW report The Wye Salmon Association slam the lack of mentions about water quality, pollution or in-river predation and that the report “totally fails to recognise the urgency of the situation other than to identify that salmon could become extinct in Wales in ten to twenty years’ time.”

“NRW’s answer is to consider closing all rivers,” they said. “I doubt that banning coarse fishing or canoeing would be politically acceptable to the Welsh Government, so this would then be seen as a futile and vindictive approach against salmon fishers, owners and other river users.”

There is a link below.

https://www.countytimes.co.uk/news/23515998.river-wye-powys-conservationists-slam-fishing-ban-plan/