It is now beyond doubt that Gaula is in crisis and whilst it is tempting to think that we are the first generation to experience such a dire situation, I can assure you that we are not. Recently I have been researching a new filming project for television called ‘The Salmon Lords.’ The series concerns the history of the British ‘Lakse Lorder’ whom fished in Norway between the mid eighteen hundreds and the first World War. It is commonly believed that the Lorder stopped fishing for Norwegian salmon largely because of the outbreak of war and whilst this was undoubtedly a factor, the overwhelming reason, according to my research, was declining catches of salmon.
The Englishman, John Gordon, fished the middle beats of Gaula from the middle to the end of the nineteenth century. Indeed, Gordon and his party were the first visitors to stay in our family house, Storstuu Winsnes, in the year that it was built (1882). During this period, catches were peaking but Gordon, aware of the increasing exploitation of salmon by netting in the fjord and river, feared for the future. According to the Singsås Bok, Gordon tried to establish a hatchery on Gaula as early as 1872. Female fish were stripped of their eggs and male salmon milt was used to fertilise them. The salmon parr were released, apparently, almost as soon as they had absorbed their egg sac - a policy that we now understand was doomed to failure because it was simply too early for the small fish to stand a good chance of survival.
By the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the exploitation of salmon on Gaula was so damaging that the British aristocracy largely abandoned fishing numerous rivers, including Gaula.
Does this sound familiar? Yes, of course it does. Selling fishing on Gaula is becoming increasingly difficult and as someone whom has built a career in fishing and the media, I can assure you that the reputation of fishing in Norway and on Gaula in particular has reached new lows this season. The river now has a reputation of being in decline after three years of reducing salmon runs and this year’s disastrous start has worsened the situation.
So why is Gaula in such a mess and more importantly, what can we do about it? Much has been made of late of the importance of catch and release and its vitality to the future of the river. And whilst I am an advocate of catch and release, I am the first to acknowledge that it is but one of the management tools at our disposal and it is not the panacea to cure all ills. Indeed, there are some practical difficulties in establishing a catch and release policy on Gaula which we will consider shortly.
Make no mistake, Gaula is a robust river that has only recently wilted to the pressures that are affecting worldwide salmon stocks, namely over-harvesting at sea, lice infestation from salmon farms, hydro-electric (not an issue on Gaula) and gyrodactylus (which Gaula has remained immune from).
Gaula, however, has a further unique problem to add to the mix and it is the extra ingredient that has finally brought the elephant to its knees. That problem is over-fishing by rod and line. At its peak, it has been estimated that Gaula has experienced as many as 10000 fishing visitors in its short thirteen week season. And yet, current regulations legally allow the harvesting of 50000 fish from the river!
Open access to the river and cheap fishing, so long extolled as one of Gaula’s great virtues, has finally taken its toll. The fact is, that in the old days, rod and line fishing was quite inefficient: not so today. Modern fly fishing, with the development of better rods, reels, lines and flies is now so efficient at catching salmon that it is equal if not superior to traditional spin fishing.
Salmon entering the Gaula system endure a battery of spoons, worms and flies as they make their way up the river. The pressure is relentless. As other rivers in Norway have been forced to close, the pressure on Gaula has been ratcheted up year by year to the point now where it is one of the most heavily fished salmon rivers I have seen (and I have seen and fished a great many!)
That great Scandinavian salmon angler, Hakan Norling pointed out to me several years ago that in his experience, modern Gaula salmon are much less aggressive when taking the fly than in comparison to the eighties. This notion has been heavily reinforced by numerous experienced salmon fishers whom have pronounced Gaula fish as being difficult to catch. This is hardly surprising when one considers just how many artificial lures and flies fish see on their way up the river. Last season, the estimated recapture rate on Gaula was over thirty percent and that is a phenomenally high number by the standards of any river.
Could it be that we are witnessing short term genetic engineering whereby the salmon that survive this intensive fishing pressure are the fish that are naturally more reluctant to take a fly or spoon? If so, these ‘cautious genes’ may well be being passed on to the progeny of surviving fish. We may also be witnessing another phenomenon associated with over fishing and that is an increasingly late run of fish. Genetic engineering would suggest that late running fish survive and it may well be that the river’s survival mechanism will be for late running fish to become dominant.
And if we accept that short term genetic engineering is possible, think of the consequences of killing all of our big fish - a practice that has been glorified on this river. Would local hunting teams think of harvesting all of the finest elk or reindeer from the herd, slaughtering all of the biggest and strongest animals? Of course not. To do so would result in a sickly population of animals with shrinking size. And yet we happily do exactly that with our greatest asset, our river’s biggest salmon.
The intense fishing pressure on Gaula is compounded by the tradition of allowing fishermen to be at the water twenty-four hours a day, a policy that I strongly disagree with. Here at Winsnes, we close the river twice a day from 2pm until 6pm and from 2am until 6am so that all of our salmon pools get a rest. The results have been very encouraging. Not only do our guests like this system, we have also witnessed that fishermen of average or weak ability at least stand a chance of hooking salmon. And with a strong catch and release rate (over 90 percent on our water), we feel comfortable that we are running an efficient system that keeps guests happy and helps the river.
Catch and release is controversial in Norway. As an Englishman in a foreign country, I have a deep respect for Norwegian culture and tradition and I am also very fond of my rural life over here. Norwegians cherish the tradition of harvesting from nature and whilst this may be alien to my upbringing, I am comfortable with the idea provided that it is sustainable.
The problem is that, to quote the old Bob Dylan song ‘Times they are a’ Changing...’ and in the modern world the pressures on nature are intense. Of course, we are all more wealthy now and fishing has become increasingly a sporting pursuit rather that a necessity for harvesting food to supplement low income as it was in the past. Many, many more visitors have flocked to Gaula because in the modern world we all have better holiday entitlement and more money to spend on leisure. Gaula’s ‘open door policy’ has been hugely popular with foreign visitors whom perhaps do not have the resources to fish other, more exclusive salmon rivers where prices are higher.
I for one do not see the solution to Gaula’s dilemma to be to make fishing prices so high that anyone less that very wealthy can afford to fish it. Of course, high fishing prices and operating exclusive fishing is one way of controlling over fishing on rod and line. Yet to see Gaula become totally exclusive would be a backward step in my view. Rather, most of us want a river that offers access to people of many different backgrounds and whilst exclusive fly fishing zones like ours have a role to play, so too do the public fisheries that offer fishermen the chance to fish with other methods.
Somehow we have to find a way to manage the river whilst still retaining the our principles and therein lies our biggest challenge. That catch and release fishing has a vital part to play, I have no doubt. I have heard it said by staunch opponents of catch and release that it is ‘cruel’ and ‘ineffective.’ The facts simply don’t back this up. Where catch and release is practiced properly, survival rates are in the high eighties or low nineties of percent. Herein lies the nub of the problem: on Gaula, many of our vistors do not understand how to safely release fish and if we are to move toward the use of catch and release as an important river management tool, we have to find a way to quickly and efficiently educate landowners and fishermen to do it properly. We must also find a way to provide a stock of landing nets at low cost to landowners because without them, safe catch and release is very difficult.
Looking to the future, the first step on the road to recovery is not to bury our heads in the sand and pretend that Gaula will somehow recover without our help. It won’t. I have heard landowners say ‘if I force my fishermen to release all fish I will lose business this year...’ To them, I say this: educate and persuade. The consequences of not acting are far more dire than a season or two of reduced income: it is the very real and imminent possibility of not having an income from the river at all!
The first step is for us not to pretend that we are heading for a crisis but to acknowledge that we are already in one. Next, we need to explore ways to take the heat down on this fine river without using high fishing prices as a management tool. Our management of Gaula should not be based on creating a river that is an exclusive fly fishing venue for wealthy foreigners. No, it must be class and income neutral and based upon codes of behaviour that we all buy into. Ultimately, we must find a safe level of fish that we can harvest from the river without damaging stocks and get used to the idea that we must protect our prime sport fish - big Gaula salmon. Catch and release will play its part but there is a huge amount of work to do if we are not, like John Gordon and the Lakse Lorder, to turn our back on the river and instead make the stories of epic gaula salmon fishing simply fireside stories related by grandparents.
To conclude, I will quote not a great Englishamn but a great American, JFK whom said: ‘Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country.‘ Gaula will survive and flourish again if we ask what not our river can do for us but what we can do for our river.
