On Wednesday 17th August 2016,a party went electro-fishing on the Auchengaich Burn, a tributary of the River Fruin which in turn flows into Loch Lomond. The party was led by Hannele Honkanen, PhD Student-IBIS Project from the University of Glasgow. Keith Adams, Keith Gillies, Jim Freeman & Eddie Edmonstone assisted from the Loch Lomond Fisheries Trust(LLFT)with the help from the Dewar Durie family from Finnich Malise, Croftamie, Marguerite and Andrew with their son-in law Adrian and grand children Tristan & Eloise who were visiting from North Carolina, USA.
Hann made the following observation & analysis:-
“The trust’s 2016 electrofishing surveys were started on the 17th August. The first site was the beautiful Auchengaich Burn, a tributary of the Fruin Water. A standard quantitative, three pass depletion method was used to assess the fish diversity. The first pass provided 37 fish, the second 27 and the third 10 – giving a total of 74 fish for the 22 metre long site.
Two species were encountered; brown trout (Salmo trutta) and minnow (Phoxinus phoxinus). The vast majority (all but four, which were the minnows) of the fish were brown trout. Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) fry have been found in previous years but none were encountered this year. All captured fish were also measured for length, which allows determining their age. Most of the brown trout were less than 70 mm long which means they are fry that spawned earlier this year. Overall, the captured trout represented three different age classes.”
The first site was situated 100 metres downstream of the road bridge on the old Glen Fruin Road to Faslane.
This was situated 400m metres above the MoD/Petroineos gabbion baskets which has been causing a serious obstruction and barrier for many years. From the photographs you will note that this has become even more of a hazard in recent years and is now being addressed by Ronnie Murray (pipeline Specialist) and his team at Petroineos, which is encouraging.
In the afternoon, we then conducted two more timed surveys one 50 metres downstream of the gabion baskets and another timed survey 150 metres below the second site. We saw a considerable amount of juvenile fish including a rather large eel about 16-18 inches long.
All in all it was a glorious day in Glen Fruin. We really appreciated everyone’s help and enthusiasm. Many thanks.
Yours Aye Eddie Edmonstone
Chairman of the Loch Lomond Fisheries Trust (LLFT)