MR. C ALDER WOOD'S REPORT. 



Fishery Board for Scotland, 

 February 1907. 



I have the honour to submit my report for the year 1906. 



Keduction of Netting in Narrow Waters. 



The extensive coast salmon fisheries in Scotland may be 

 regarded as the reliable source of the supply of fish in best possible 

 condition for the market. To increase and maintain our stock of 

 salmon the sound policy of reducing netting in rivers and narrow 

 tidal waters, where fish congregate before ascending to their natural 

 spawning grounds, is becoming more widely known and more 

 commonly put in practice. 



Other factors than overnetting, such as pollutions and the con- 

 struction of weirs or dam dykes, have, no doubt, in certain localities, 

 reduced and even entirely prevented the ascent of salmon. The 

 pollutions of the Clyde, for instance — now happily being steadily 

 reduced by the sewage works of Glasgow — put an end to the 

 regular appearance of salmon in that river about the year 1850. 

 The fisheries of the Leven, in like manner, were seriously affected 

 by the rise of the Vale of Leven Bleaching and Turkey Red 

 industries ; and more recently the sudden influx of polluted 

 pit-water to the Girvan, annihilated fish in that river for a 

 considerable time. 



Such dangers are, however, confined to definite localities and 

 have to be dealt with by means other than those directly concerned 

 in the regulation of the actual fisheries. The great majority of our 

 Scottish rivers are happily not seriously polluted, but the experi- 

 ence of various methods of netting has abundantly shown that in 

 not a few cases the steady practice of net and coble fishing — river 

 and estuary seine-netting — has been responsible for the decline of 

 the stock of fish. Our knowledge of the life-history of the salmon, 

 added to during recent years by the marking of fish and study of their 

 scales, &c, shows that very many salmon do not spawn annually, 

 that there are always more salmon in the sea than in our rivers, 

 and that the salmon which enter our rivers are the somewhat 

 limited company upon which we are entirely dependent for the 

 upkeep of the stock. If, then, we persistently remove, season after 

 season, those breeding fish, we are, in spite of close times, following 

 a most dangerous policy. It is, of course, clear that different rivers 



