Shedding light on the mysterious sea trout in Iceland
A beautiful springer. Photo by Einar Falur.
Thorarinn Kristinsson, the owner of Tungulaekur and fisheries scientist Johannes Sturlaugsson at the research company Salmon and Trout Research (Laxfiskar in Icelandic), have indulged in some extensive sea trout research over the past years. Some of their revealing findings will soon be introduced. As sea trout have not been targeted like this to any great extent over the years, there is quite some expectation.
Tungulaekur is a small river in the central south of Iceland. It is one of the tributaries to the glacial river Skafta and sits in the middle of Iceland’;s most prolific sea trout realm. They are wild and native in these parts, remnants from the last ice age.
Few if any sea trout rivers in Iceland or anywhere, have a comparable catch pr rod ratio and the river is literally full of fish over the main fishing months. Thorarinn runs a hatchery on the bank of Haedarlaekur, a small tributary to Tungulaekur and has for years enhanced the Tungulaekur runs. But now he has bigger plans for the river and the region and has therefore started co-operation with Johannes Sturlaugsson.
Over the last several years Johannes has monitored the runs and the state of the stocks in the river. He has also managed a huge tagging experiment as they hope to supply data on many aspects of the sea trout’;s life. How long it stays in the river as a young fish, how often it makes the salt water trip as a juvenile and then how old it can get and how often it can spawn. How far from shore it goes, when it travels, when it feeds etc.
Thorarinn with a live twenty pounder destined for the hatchery.
Although no river is the same, there will still be many information aspects that other river owners may look to in order to supplement their own efforts to improve their fisheries.
A part of it all is the installment of a fish counter at the mouth of the river where it enters Skafta. The river is very narrow at the mouth, making it far easier to monitor the runs. The counter is the most accomplished of many in Iceland and is the only video counter in an Icelandic sea trout river. It also determines if the fish pushing through are sea trout, salmon, sea char, stationary char or brown trout. Other counters have so far only determined the length of the fish going through making it a guessing game as to which type of fish was involved. Here they are photographed extensively as well and fish are scanned to record information on individuals tagged with PIT tags.
Johannes maintains that the research setup used, that is based on the new counter and different types of electronic and conventional tags, allows him to understand this mysterious fish all the better. “We are getting very close to releasing info that surpasses any before it on the sea trout. Because of this we will be well suited for advising others on monitoring and enhancement of stocks and runs.”
To shed better light on what Johannes has been up to, last spring he tagged 220 springers in the river. Already he has found some individual sea trout that have made as many as eleven runs to sea and spawned up to nine times. At that point they are pretty old and very big, ranging from 80 to 100 cm in length and weighing up to 20 pounds or more. Still they do not know for certain how old the sea trout do get and how often they are capable of spawning. But that knowledge is just around the corner. More on this adventure later. Those who would like to get more detailed information on these studies should keep in touch with anglingiceland.is as we will shortly run an article by Johannes himself where he introduces the outlines of these sea trout studies.
