Catch and release adds quality on Icelandic rivers
Catch and release often adds quality to the fishing. Photo Árni Pétur Hilmarsson.
Iceland has a few catch and release salmon rivers but most rivers are still with a voluntary c-r system, although quite a few have implanted a c-r system for all salmon of 70 cm and over. That is to protect the mws strain in the stocks. However while many rivers have such a healthy stock that c-r does not seem to be required, the system undoubtedly adds to the quality of the fishing. Here is an example.
Two of Svalbarðsá‘s leasers Jón Þór and Jón Þorsteinn took two days on the river at the end of last September. Svalbarðsá is a 2-3 rod river in the northeast which produces an average of 300 salmon pr season. When they took over the river they implanted a strict c-r system and even took it a step further than most as they put in a tagging program. What they hoped to find out was the movement of the salmon once in the river and also how high a percentage of the tagged fish were caught again by anglers before the seasons end.
The two Jón‘s hooked several salmon over the space of two days. They managed to land ten of them, among them a 103 cm monster of an estimated 23 pounds. Five of their salmon were tagged fish, thus 50 percent of their catch had been caught earlier in the season. So it is fair to say that they would have caugt five salmon or less and seen far fewer salmon in the river if it were run as a catch and kill fishery.
