Latest Catches
 We aim to provide weekly fishing reports for the River Alness on this page throughout the main salmon season from July. If you catch a salmon, sea-trout or quality brown trout on any of the Alness fishings, then e-mail us the details via the enquiries page and we will include it in our catch reports.
The index provides access to weekly catch reports since July 2009. Click on the links below to read the fishing reports for earlier seasons.
Novar 10/10/09by Novar Fishings Manager - 19:10 on 12 October 2009'You Should Have Been Here This Week'
Saturday’s spate ‘did the trick’ and produced a cracking week on the Alness. Water levels were good throughout the week starting on Monday at + 1ft 8in, then another spate on the Tuesday rose to + 2ft 6in, then as that fell away, some small ‘top-ups’ later in the week ensured that the water level never dropped below + 1ft 4in. The spates early week coincided with spring tides, and this resulted in a run of fresh fish through the river. Interestingly these were mainly grilse, and no sign as yet of autumn salmon in numbers, so hopefully that’s still to come.
Conditions were generally excellent for fishing, though taking behaviour was patchy, with one beat fishing well one day and not the next, and there was no obvious pattern to this. Overall though it was a fantastic week on the Novar beats with 73 salmon & grilse caught, including many fresh fish!
Grabbing the accolades this week are Nick FitzGerald and Peter Hukins, two long-term regulars who between them landed 23 fish for their week (modesty prevents Nick from saying who got the most!). Even more notable than the total fish landed, was that they both achieved a Novar Fishings Grand Slam, i.e. they both caught at least one fish off each of the six rotating beats during the week – outstanding!
So the rest of the anglers had to settle for their share of the other 50 fish: Mike Allen from Tain and Andrew Dunn from Evanton had 3 apiece from Beat 1 on the Monday; John Cameron from Dingwall and Alan Shearer from Orkney accounted for 9 fish for their 4 days between them; Roger Evans’ party had 8 fish; and Sam and Adam Hatfield shared 8 fish. There were also 4 first salmon. Congratulations go to Chris Phillips, Andrew Monaghan and Mel Scott, the 4th ‘first timer’ being one of Roger Evans’ party.
Water levels look good for the coming week, with more rain in the forecast for Monday evening and Tuesday, so the fishing prospects look favourable. With fewer anglers this week (yes we have late availability!) total catches are unlikely to be as spectacular as last week, but the fishing could be just as good.
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