Annan Fishery Management Plan - RAFTS

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River Annan DSFB Fisheries Management Plan 2009 – 20143 Main Factors Limiting Fisheries PerformanceThe principle factors that limit production within the Annan catchment aregenerally related to land use. On a broad scale, livestock, agriculture and itsassociated impacts stands out as the most widespread. There are however alsoother issues that may only be apparent at a localised level but may be highlysignificant at that level. Other factors such as sea survival and climate changemay be particularly significant across the whole of the catchment. Obviously at alocal level whilst we can inform the knowledge base, at a local, national andinternational level it is difficult to take remedial action.Table 3.1Factors limiting fish production in the Annan Catchment*1: major factor across large parts of the catchment, 2: locally significant, 3:significant but unlikely to be effectively controlled by local managementFactor sig* Evidence1Over-grazing1 Habitat surveys (backed up with electrofishing) that have beencarried out across most of the main Annan, its tributaries and theKirtle Water (still to do Lochar water, Pow water and minor SolwayTributaries). Chronic over-grazing has been identified in all of thesecatchments both from cattle and sheep. This problem is particularlyacute on the parts of the Milk, Dryfe, Mein, Kirtle and many of thesmaller burns that enter directly into the river, particularly in the2Diffuse Pollutionlowland areas.1 Both diffuse and point source pollution is an identified problem inmany parts of the catchment. Areas of particular concern includethe entire Kirtle catchment, the entire Lochar catchment, the entirePow catchment, the Mein Water and the minor tributaries that enterthe eastern part of the catchment from Johnstonebridge south.Most of the diffuse pollution can be attributed to agricultural landuse, probably the frequent application of slurry and other wasteproducts. On parts of the Lochar diffuse pollution is probably alsofrom land fill.3Point SourcePollutionThese issues have been identified through electrofishing andinvertebrate surveys (invertebrate surveys still in there infancy butthe data set is expanding and will cover all electrofishing sitessoon).1 & 2 Invertebrate surveys have identified areas in certain parts of thecatchment that appear to be suffering from chronic point sourcepollution (particularly the Annan Water, the Mein Water, the KirtleWater and Lochar). The nature of these pollutions is not yet fullyunderstood but is highly significant where it is found and seems to19
River Annan DSFB Fisheries Management Plan 2009 – 20144River Engineering5Obstructionsalways be related to agricultural premises (although not necessarilyagricultural practices) and septic tank/sewage discharges. Verysignificant problems with point-source pollution occur in the Kirtlearound Kirkpatrick Fleming due to inadequate sewage treatment (aSEPA report stimulated by the Board in 2002 demonstratedincreases in the number of coli forms present in the waterdownstream from this sewage works was several orders ofmagnitude higher than the background level).1 Many of the smaller burns (2m wide) which are treated with greatersensitivity.1 &2 One obstruction above all others on the catchment remains aserious problem that limits the production of trout and salmon, theweir under the west Coast Mainline on the Whamphray Water. Thisstructure effectively bars production on the whole of this catchment(26km 2 ). There are other structures under the west coast mainlinenotably on the Dinwoodie Burn (Weir), the Dead Burn (Aquaduct),the Dalmakether Burn (culvert) and the Evan Water (Aquaduct), butthey are far smaller in nature. Above all of these obstructionselectrofishing has shown that there is zero salmon production andthe low trout densities that are found seem to indicate that there islittle if any migratory trout influence in the spawning population.There are other obstructions related to the road, (local authority,national network and forestry tracks) but they are mostly minor innature. The most common problems are perched culverts on minortributaries and Irish bridges in forestry areas. All of these burnscould potentially be very important in securing a recovery in the seatrout population.A weir on the Duff Kinnel that has been inaccessible since the1830s had a fish pass installed in 2005. Although initialelectrofishing results indicate that this has been successful onlytime will tell whether or not this is permanently so.20
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