Fisheries and rod licensing - Sea trout return to the River Leven after a century of absence
22 May 2014 12:19 PM
First rod catch of sea
trout for a century
A sea trout has been caught by
an angler on the River Leven in Teesside – marking a huge milestone in
efforts to bring migratory fish back to the area.
In what is believed to be the
first rod catch of sea trout on the Leven since the Industrial Revolution, the
angler who landed the fish reported the exciting catch to the Environment
Agency.
The Leven is a tributary of the
River Tees, where salmon and sea trout catch data show that migratory fish are
returning to the catchment following decades of absence.
Water quality in the River Tees,
following the Industrial Revolution, used to be so bad that fish could not live
in it.
But the Environment Agency and
its partners have worked hard to improve water quality and ensure that fish can
move upstream.
This involved the construction
of a fish pass on the lower River Leven in 2007, allowing fish to reach
spawning grounds upstream.
The catch on the Leven comes
after a fisheries survey in 2010 recorded a salmon in the
river.
Paul Frear, Fisheries Technical
Officer at the Environment Agency, said:
I’m really excited about
this catch. There have been rumours among anglers that sea trout are back in
the Leven, but now we have cast-iron proof.
We constructed a fish pass on
the lower River Leven in 2007 that would allow fish from the River Tees to
return to spawning grounds on the upper Leven, which had previously been
cut-off for over a century.
Salmon and sea trout are in
important part of our rivers’ ecology and they are a valuable economic
fish stock – so this is fantastic news for the North
East.
One local angler
said:
I am delighted to see that these
little ‘bars of silver’ can now ascend the River Leven once again
after an absence of scores of years. It’s wonderful.
Rod catch data show a
significant rise in salmon and sea trout on the Tees since the early 1990s. It
is predicted that the Tees rod catch will meet its catch target of 485 rod
caught fish by about early to mid 2020s if it follows the same pattern of
recovery as the Tyne and Wear.