Kelts, Redds? What the hell???

[underwood]

So I've fly fished for trout for many years and discovered Grayling recently too but Salmon seem to be a completely different kettle of fish.

It seems they have a hundred different names for differnt stages of there development. Who can teach me how to tell my grilse from my parr. My Redd to my kelt? And what it all means?

[John Gray]

As I understand it, a young salmon, having emerged from the redd as an alevin in the late spring, will remain as a fry/parr in the river of its birth for two to three years. As a smolt, it will then migrate to sea in the spring or early summer. It will then remain at sea during the following winter and may return, at the earliest, as a grilse, in the following year. A grilse may enter the river at any time of the year - I once caught a fresh run grilse in March on the River Tummel at Pitlochry - but they usually run in summer or autumn. A grilse will weigh anything from a pound and a half up to around ten pounds, depending on the length of time spent at sea and the quality of the sea feeding.

If a salmon spends more than one winter at sea before returning to its native river, it is described as a multi-sea-winter fish, which may enter the river at any time of the season. A MSW salmon might spend two, three or more winters at sea before returning to the river. The running pattern in British rivers has changed over the years and most salmon now enter the river in the autumn. MSW fish which run in the spring (springers) are now highly prized by anglers.

After spawning, I believe that most atlantic salmon, like their Pacific cousins, die. A small percentage, however, do survive and remain, inexplicably, in the river for several months as kelts, slowly recovering from the ordeal of spawning, and, if they survive, may eventually make it back to sea and resume sea feeding. It has always puzzled me why these kelts don't return to sea immediately after spawning. This would surely give them a much better chance of surviving to make a second spawning run the following year.

[Willie Gunn]

John, a quite high percentage of females survive spawing but whether they survive the colonies of seals at the river mouths is a different story.
Kelts hang about recovering as the change from fresh to salt water is quite traumatic............and those bloody seals

[Pond Olive(lately Colona)]

A visit to the fish counter on the Ettrick, which is to be highly recomended, will show how surprisingly many fish come back down. Link to the counter-site below.

www.tweedfoundation.org.uk/News/Updates/Ettrick/ettrick.html

[underwood]

thanks guys this does help a bit but still seems quite complicated. Are there any websites or anything that can explain it in a bit more detail? Or does anyone else want to add anything?

Ideally I would like definitions for the following:

Grilse=
Redd=
Kelt=
Smelt=
Smolt=
Springers=
Any others?

Does their name all depend on how long they stay at sea? I'm just a bit confused.

[Sewinbasher]

underwood said:

thanks guys this does help a bit but still seems quite complicated. Are there any websites or anything that can explain it in a bit more detail? Or does anyone else want to add anything?

Ideally I would like definitions for the following:

Grilse=
Redd=
Kelt=
Smelt=
Smolt=
Springers=
Any others?

Does their name all depend on how long they stay at sea? I'm just a bit confused.

Grilse = salmon returning to the river after just 1 year's sea feeding
Redd = spawning bed of salmon, sea trout or trout
Kelt = a salmon or sea trout that has spawned and is still in the river on its way back to sea (hopefully). They can look remarkably like a fresh fish to the uninitiated.
Smelt = A species of small fish unrelated to salmon, sea trout or trout
Smolt = a juvenile salmon or sea trout that has acquired a silvery coat and is migrating to the sea.
Springer = a salmon that returns to the river in spring rather than later in the year - generally any fish that enters up to and including May is called a Springer although some would say that May fish are too late to be Springers.
Parr = very young salmon, sea trout or trout prior to smolting in the case of the first two.

Hope this helps.

[charlieH]

underwood said:

thanks guys this does help a bit but still seems quite complicated. Are there any websites or anything that can explain it in a bit more detail? Or does anyone else want to add anything?

Ideally I would like definitions for the following:

Grilse= A salmon returning to its natal river for the first time, typically between June and August, having spent a little over one year at sea.

Redd= A depression in the river-bed gravel created by the female salmon using her tail, into which she deposits her eggs before re-covering them with gravel.

Kelt= A salmon that has survived spawning and is returning to sea.

Smelt= Another species of fish, Osmerus eperlanus, also known as sparling. Nothing to do with salmon.

Smolt= A juvenile salmon that, having spent 1-3 years (typically 2 years) in the river as a parr, takes on a silvery colouring and migrates downriver to the sea.

Springers= Salmon that return to their natal rivers early in the season. Definitions vary, and are obviously a bit arbitrary, but springers are often defined as fish that run between January and May.

Any others?

Baggot= A salmon that remains in the river over the winter, like a kelt, but has failed to spawn. Like kelts, they are classed in law as 'unseasonable', and must be returned.

Grilse are defined as fish that have spent one winter at sea (1SW fish). Beyond that, fish that stay for two or more seasons at sea (MSW fish) are not differentiated.

[underwood]

Thank you to Sewinbasher and CharlieH. This is exactly what I was looking for. Thank you again to everyone else, you also helped me as I know a lot more about Salmon now.

Now I just have to catch one!

[underwood]

2 more questions, sorry guys.

Can a grilse return to the river, go back to sea as a kelt and then return again? If so is he still a grilse?

Also, are there Salmon that never migrate, if so what are they called?

Last one, Do still water Salmon have a different name?

[charlieH]

underwood said:

2 more questions, sorry guys.

Can a grilse return to the river, go back to sea as a kelt and then return again? If so is he still a grilse?

Also, are there Salmon that never migrate, if so what are they called?

Last one, Do still water Salmon have a different name?

A grilse can certainly return to the sea as a kelt and then come back a second time. If it does so, it would be classed as a salmon, not be a grilse. The majority of fish that do survive spawning will take a year off before returning again, so they have another full year's feeding at sea and will be of comparable size to a 2SW fish on its first return to the river. Incidentally, such a fish is unlikely to be a 'he' - typically about 5% of a river's run are second-time spawners, but almost all of these are females. A second-run cock fish is quite uncommon.

There are salmon which don't go to sea, but this is basically because they are physically prevented from migrating, not through lack of instinct to do so. I believe there are populations of them in New Zealand (though salmon, like trout, are not native there and come from intoduced stock). They are simply called landlocked salmon.

Salmon can be caught in quite a few places where there are stillwaters (in the form of lakes, lochs, loughs or llyns) on a river system. These are the same fish as are found in the rivers and, as you would expect, carry just the same names. There are also a few stillwaters that stock artificially reared salmon; these may be called pellet pigs, frankenfish, or a number of other derogatory names.

[Sewinbasher]

underwood said:

2 more questions, sorry guys.

Can a grilse return to the river, go back to sea as a kelt and then return again? If so is he still a grilse?

Also, are there Salmon that never migrate, if so what are they called?

Last one, Do still water Salmon have a different name?

About 4% of Atlantic salmon survive to spawn more than once - all female. If one of these was a grilse when it first ran, when it returns it will be a MSW salmon. Interestingly multi-spawners are not often big salmon for their age, they lose too much condition spawning to make huge progress in growth.

There is a race of landlocked atlantic salmon in NE USA and Canada which lives in lakes and migrates up feeder streams to spawn, it does not grow very big, the record is around 6lbs. These are called ouananiche or sebago salmon depending on where there are.

Some species of pacific salmon have been stocked into the Great Lakes in the USA and along with some rainbow trout, treat the lakes as the sea and run the rivers to spawn each autumn.

[John Gray]

underwood said:

2 more questions, sorry guys.

Can a grilse return to the river, go back to sea as a kelt and then return again? If so is he still a grilse?

Also, are there Salmon that never migrate, if so what are they called?

Last one, Do still water Salmon have a different name?

A grilse may survive spawning, return to sea, and make a second spawning run the following year. It would then be classed as a salmon, not a grilse.

All Atlantic salmon, as far as I am aware, migrate.

There is no species of non-migratory salmon in the British Isles, although I beleive that there are North American species of landlocked salmon.

[underwood]

Thanks again guys, you've all been a big help. At last it doesn't all seem as confusing.

If a novice was interested in catching his first salmon what would your advice be?

[sagefly]

If you want to catch your first salmon, my advice is to:-

Select a convenient river that has a decent run of fish

Study the patterns of catches if they are available

Speak to the ghillies on the beat/s

Learn to cast acceptably, ie present the fly so that it fishes the whole swing.

Book the fishing after checking that the beat will "fish" in the water height

The hard part now, get used to not catching fish or,

Catch a fish on your first day and wonder what the fuss was about.

either way, you will need to start saving as it can become costly!!

[underwood]

thanks sagefly, this helps. my mate wants to catch his first salmon too but he said he knows a trout lake with some landlocked salmon in it we could try. To be honest I would not feel the same about a non wild fish, In fact I think i'd feel a bit cheated so I am determined to go for a river fish.

I might try and arrange to go up to scotland for a weekend with a professional guide but I think they charge quite a lot. I guess with anything worth doing you only get out what you put in.