Welcome to the Scottish Freshwater Fishery Management home page. This is a new site which describes how Scotland’s salmon and freshwater fisheries are managed and which organisations are involved. This site contains all the common information about fishery management in Scotland. Please use the navigation bar to the right to find out more about the organisations involved – theDistrict Salmon Fishery Boards and their representative body –ASFB, and the River &Fishery Trusts and their representative body –RAFTS.

Scotland has a unique system of managing its salmon and freshwater fisheries. All river catchments have their own characteristics, diversity of species and range of fisheries, and as such, fishery management has been delivered on a river-by-river principle for at least the last 150 years. Historically, salmon fisheries have been of greatest economic importance, and this is reflected in the amount of legislation which has been devoted to salmon since the mid 19th Century to the present day. However, Scotland’s diversity of species has also increased since then, and in more recent years, there has been greater interest in the development of fisheries for other species, such as the wide range of coarse fish and rainbow trout. Unlike England and Wales, Scotland has no rod licensing system. All fishing rights (with one or two exceptions), are private rights, with varying degrees of legal protection.

In terms of fishery management bodies, the system in Scotland, on the face of it, is relatively simple. Scotland has 54 salmon fishery districts which are set out in legislation. District Salmon Fishery Boards (DSFBs) exist for most of these districts, and these have legal powers and duties relating to the management and conservation of salmon and sea trout. As there is no public rod licence to raise funds for managing the fisheries, each DSFB has legal powers to raise a levy from the individual salmon fishery owners on each river system to enable management and conservation to be carried out. The Association of Salmon Fishery Boards (ASFB) represents all DSFBs in Scotland and more information on the DSFB structure can be found on the ASFBs web site at:

http://asfb.hub.uk.com/default.asp

Getting the correct information on the status of fish populations in order to make good fishery management decisions is a perennial problem for fishery managers. The DSFBs are limited in their role to managing salmon and sea trout only. The increasing importance of other species to Scotland’s aquatic diversity, economy and social value and their ability to support new fisheries is of growing interest. No formal management structures exist for these species. The emergence of the Fishery Trusts since the mid 1990s have gone a considerable way to addressing this gap in knowledge about species other than salmon and sea trout. The Trusts also play a key role in providing information to DSFBs to promote, sound, science based management. The network of Trusts continue to expand and evolve and many have developed sophisticated systems for monitoring freshwater fish populations and providing good advice to fishery managers to enable decisions to be based on best available information – this is the crux of good fishery management. There are currently18 fishery trusts and like the ASFB, these are represented through a single national representative body called Rivers and Fishery Trusts Scotland (RAFTS).

More information on the Trust network and RAFTS can be found at:

http://rafts.hub.uk.com/

Both ASFB and RAFTS, as the representative national bodies for DSFBs and Trusts, have developed a close working relationship, and are closely meshed at Executive level within each organisation. Equally important is the need for the member DSFBs and Trusts within the local network to work hand-in-hand – this is currently being developed as part of a drive for better co-ordination within the freshwater fishery management sector in Scotland. It is worth noting that DSFBs and Trusts are constitutionally different – DSFBs are statutory organisations whereas Trusts are set up as charitable organisations – however, both have to observe certain legal provisions set out in statute.

In order to achieve better co-ordination, both organisations are developing a joint Guide to Best Practice, have now embarked on a joint Tri-annual Newsletter and of course we are developing this joint website.

A further national initiative is underway which is probably the single most important and influential catalyst for change which Scotland’s freshwater fisheries have faced since the fishery boards were created in the Mid 1800s.

The Scottish Freshwater Fisheries Forum is a national partnership initiative between the Scottish Executive and the private sector fishery management and angling interests. The Forum, through its Steering Group, has played a pivotal role in shaping the Aquaculture & Fisheries Bill which is currently before Parliament. The Forum has two further key challenges before it which will shape the future of freshwater fisheries in Scotland.

The first is the development of a Strategic Framework for Freshwater Fisheries. This will identify all the stakeholders involved within the freshwater fisheries sector and create a co-ordinated plan of action to deliver sustainable and economically viable fisheries in the medium to long term.

The second challenge, and which falls within this framework, is to address the long standing gaps which exist in the current management system which fail to manage species other than salmon and sea trout. Addressing this will be a complex task requiring considerable thought and input from all involved in freshwater fisheries – anglers, conservationists and fishery managers alike. A considerable amount of information is available on the detailed discussions of the Forum to date.

If you are interested in these future issues for fisheries in Scotland, please take the time to look at the Forum web pages at

www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Fisheries/Salmon-Trout-Coarse/FFF/Intro