To say that the month of November has been mild is an understatement with air temperatures exceeding 16' centigrade on a few days and rarely dipping below double figures at night, this has also kept water temperatures a little warmer than we would normally expect and while the salmon throughout the river have started spawning there still seems to be quite a number of fish in the pools waiting to move onto the redds.

The picture above is just below the Dalmore pool on beat 10  taken from a drone. The redds are clearly visible as lighter patches. Female salmon (hens) will dig out multiple redds over the course of a few hours or even days and once they have completed laying they will drop back to deeper water to rest and recuperate before attempting the journey back to sea in late winter or early spring, unfortunately the males (cocks) tend to stay on the redds to fertilize as many eggs as possible which often means most males perish due to exhaustion.

The past few days have seen continued heavy rainfall swelling rivers to dangerous levels causing widespread disruption throughout the country, this of course will cause great concern for all those involved in the salmon angling community with the danger of those eggs already laid in the redds being washed out. The Thurso did have high levels on Saturday but nowhere near record highs and dropped away very quickly, once the river drops further we will be able to assess any damage done but we suspect it will be minimal.