The spawning this season appears to have went quite well, but like last season, conditions were quite difficult for observing them. We had quite a lot of big water that rose very quickly at times. We also had a lot of very dull, overcast weather, and on the days I walked the river, there were periods when there was quite a bit of activity.

The tail of the long pool was very active one particular morning, with a lot of small grilse jostling for position. The Temple pool was also quite active over the next few days, on the 15th November myself and Jonnie Shaw went up to Deanich to see what activity their was up there on the spawning beds. It was the start of a cold snap, so it was pretty cold up in Glen Mor, in fact as the day went on it started to snow gently down at river level, the tops already had a good covering of snow. We were pleased to see salmon at every stop we made on the trip up, on two occasions we saw multiple pairs of salmon, along with some spare cock fish. We walked about three quarters of a mile above Deanich and also saw spawning fish in these pools, in all we saw salmon spawning in seven different areas, so it was very encouraging to see fish utilizing the spawning areas well above Glencalvie falls.

Around the 21st & 22nd November, their was another burst of activity and good spawning was going on below Shimmies pool, also in the Meetings pool, and in the broken water below Vernon’s. Several fish were using the lower few pools of the Garbh allt, which runs into the Corner pool. The tail of Belle Mackay also saw a fare bit of movement. I saw one particularly large fish spawning in the broken water of Vernon’s it weighed upwards of 18lbs, he certainly was bullying all the other fish in that area. We had the usual amount of furunculosis but no worse than usual and prior to spawning I found no dead fish at all, so they appeared to take part in the spawning and the good cold snap raised water levels, which was good for these fish. Although once we get passed the spawning, any big spates we get (which we seem to be getting more of) usually finishes the fish weakened by disease or spawning. These very big spates can be very damaging to the spawning areas. In February 2002 we had a massive spate that washed away several good spawning areas with of course It being that early the eggs were still in the gravel. That particular year spawning was very good in the Meetings pool right down to the tail. I looked out a photo I had taken of the tail of the Meetings pool In 2001 ( photo 12 ) stones A & B can be seen in both photos ( photo 11 taken November 2005 ) what cant be seen in the most recent photo is the big amount of gravel and small stone that was washed away 3 years ago and has not been replaced this area is in a bed rock gully washed clean and now about 2.5ft to 3 ft deep. Of course stone is brought down an deposited in other areas which can be beneficial but this is not always the case for example hundreds of tons of stone was washed down into the Gledfield pool at Cornhill and 90% of it is still there!

On the bottom beat, the tail of the Millars pool was quite active but not as good as two to four years ago. Last season this area was also quiet compared to previous years. The Bo Bahn was reasonable and the tail of Shepherds had a fair bit of activity, but this appeared to be fish falling back into this broken water from the main pool. At the end of November I had a look at the Blackwater just upstream of the bridge and was delighted to see in a short stretch of no more than a hundred yards, around 16 fish two or three of the pairs appeared to be still trying to spawn, this was around the 28th of November. Spawning was going on in the first couple of days in December but all has been quiet in the last week they, will usually start falling back and resting in the deeper parts of the pools now.