Deveron Trout Festival report

In 2016 Wild Trout Trust were approached by the Deveron, Bogey and Isla Charitable Rivers Trust (DBICRT) to sit on the advisory panel for the development of their new fishery management plan, which is an honour that we duly accepted.

This role offers WTT a great opportunity to support the trust in conservation and promotion of wild trout in an area of Scotland where resident’ trout have historically been considered a poor cousin (or worse) to migratory salmonids. Fortunately these views are not shared by the DBICRT and they take the conservation of all their native fish species very seriously.

Amongst the initiatives by the DBICRT to develop and improve of their fisheries, the trust wanted to reinvigorate their annual trout festival, an event in which a large number of beats on the River Deveron are made available for trout fishing for the weekend so that anglers can get affordable, easy access to the river, in exchange for providing the trust with length, weight and scale data for the fish that they catch.

This forms a great, alternative way to survey the fish stocks of a river and provides data on a component of the fish stocks that is often difficult to obtain through other means – it’s also a great fun and creates an interesting social event for like-minded anglers.

Deveron sea trout

A 58.5cm sea trout caught on a dry, size 14 large dark olive during the festival.

Deveron sea trout

A comparatively modest sized trout by Deveron standards, but a beautiful fish all the same – a dry olive upright did the business for this one.

As part of the event, the WTT were also invited to deliver an evening presentation on river habitat improvement and the work of the WTT, alongside another very interesting presentation on specimen trout angling from WTT Vice President Paul Proctor.