In the Annual Salmon Report produced for the Club by Committee member Richard Woodhouse is spelt out the woes of the Wye salmon.

The decline of Wye salmon continued in 2023 with the lowest recorded catch for over 100 years.  Just 223 fish have been reported for the whole river, according to figures produced by the Wye and Usk Foundation, with a high proportion of these taken below Monmouth.

However Ross Angling Club slightly bucked the trend with four fish, ironically our best total since 2019.  In addition a further five were lost in play.  So much for single hooks on spinners and the barbless hook rules imposed on us by the EA/NRW!

For comparison in 1994 the Clubs total was 99 salmon see attached image with this post and as recently as 2016 the Clubs total was 44 fish.

Neighbouring beats performed worse than us with Backney on zero and downstream at the famous Goodrich Court just one fish was taken late in the season.

Salmon this year were caught by Richard Woodhouse who took the first at 20.25lbs on 27th March. Jon Daniels took our biggest salmon of the season at 22lb on 24th April both these fish were caught spinning.

There was almost a four month gap before Steve Boswell took the last two salmon of the season in August with fish of 12lb and 8lb both on fly.

The five year average which is a measure of a salmon beats performance will drop to 4 from 5 for the 2024 season.