THE colder conditions in Mid Wales and the Marches over the past couple of weeks may leave us humans feeling chilly, but it has meant that salmon spawning season is heating up.

The wintery weather has triggered the start of this winter’s salmon spawning across two of the Wye & Usk Foundation’s catchments and, thanks to the low water conditions, it has been a good year to observe this annual spectacle.

While reports from the Usk have been patchy (some spawning seen at Brecon and above Sennybridge) the news from the Wye is that salmon seem to have reached most of the places you would expect to see them. The foundation’s river survey team recorded a good number of redds in the Irfon, on the main upper Wye and in smaller tributaries such as the Edw. Welsh Water staff also witnessed fish spawning in the Elan at the gravel introduction site.

Most encouragingly, salmon were spotted in the Lugg upstream of the new fish pass at Ballsgate in mid-November, completed by the foundation this summer. By last week this had translated into nine redds in the section immediately above the fish pass. Another redd was seen much further up the Lugg system near Presteigne while quite a few others were counted in the Arrow almost as far upstream as Kington.

Redd counting is an imperfect science and it is not possible to survey every section of river. On the Lugg, for example, only two miles of river was checked. The foundation will not know how successful spawning has been until next summer’s electrofishing surveys.

However, it at least appears that there has been an encouraging amount of spawning salmon across the Wye catchment so far this winter. The season’s disappointing rod catch has not necessarily equated to a weak run of fish.