Newly hatched alevins at Stromness Primary (photo: M. Taylor)
With a rather warm location for their tank and a water temperature averaging 10°C, Stromness Primary’s ova had all hatched by last Monday morning (3/02). If we compare hatching times with last year, the Stronsay ova all hatched by 16/02 and on Sanday, it wasn’t until 27/02 that all the alevins were swimming freely. Let’s hope that the warm water doesn’t have any adverse effects on the young fish and that they can all be successfully released in a few weeks.
The fry release applications for all schools will be filled in and e-mailed this week-end and we should receive the consents by the end of the week.
Around 150 brown trout ova arrived by plane on Stronsay this morning and after a presentation on the trout life cycle, the Secondary 2 pupils helped to transfer the eggs into the tank.
Following a quick check, we noticed that 4 eggs were already turning opaque instead of the usual healthy clear orange and it was decided to remove them to prevent fungus from developing. They must have been shocked during their journey from the Kirbister Loch hatchery to Stronsay.
Then, the Upper Primary and the Lower Primary children also had an introduction to the project and visited the mini-hatchery where hopefully, in a few weeks, alevins will have hatched…
Sanday received their ova on Monday morning and I’m glad to say that in spite of gale force winds and a rather bumpy flight on the small Islander plane, the ova completed their journey in very good condition.
When the first team of monitors went to check the tank this morning, there were no casualties. Accompanied by Irene at break-time, Charlie, Fraser and Sam checked that the pump was working, recorded air and water temperature (5ºC), checked for dead eggs and noticed that most ova already showed signs of life as their eyes are clearly visible.
Let’s hope that the success rate is as high this year as it was during “Troot in the Shed 2013”!
Hopefully, we’ll hear from Mrs Muir’s class shortly on this blog! 😉
M. Thomson explaining the trout's life cycle to Mr Taylor's class.
Yesterday morning, Stromness Primary school joined the “Troot in the Shed” project for the first time.
Malcolm Thomson visited Mr Taylor’s class and introduced the pupils to the life cycle of the brown trout and sea-trout. They also were able to have a good look at the 100 or so trout ova collected earlier on in the morning from the Orkney Trout Fishing Association hatchery . The children will now have to make sure they look after the ova the best they can, by removing dead eggs and monitoring water temperature in order to be able to release the juvenile salmonids in a nearby burn by the end of March.
Thanks to Mr. Erskine who braved a force 8 gale yesterday morning during his crossing to the island of Hoy, the North Walls school was able to kick off the project.
About 200 eyed ova are now being looked after by Mr Stout’s pupils and should be hatching during the first week of February, if the temperatures hold.
No later than this morning, I received an email from North Walls, including a lovely report from Matilda along with some photos:
Troot in the shed
On Wednesday 22nd of January, Mr Erskine came to North Walls to tell us about troot in the shed.
First of all he split us into groups. Group A was the people that hadn’t done the project before and group B was the people who did it last year.
After that the 2 groups went to different tables to look at the displays. Group B went to the table about sea troot as they hadn’t done it before. Once we had looked at all of the display, group B did a quiz about troot while group B watched some videos.
It took Group B quite a while to finish the quiz so group A learnt how to remove dead eggs from the tank using a turkey baster.
When both the groups had finished their activities, group A went into the library to read about fishing. Once they were out, Mr Erskine showed the older ones some real troot!!! One of them was cut open so we could see what a troot’s guts do. Group A got curious so they came in. But by the time Mr Erskine opened the troot’s stomach most of them felt quite sick!!!
Mr Erskine then gutted the troot and Mr Stout said maybe we could eat one of them!!!!
We had lots of fun learning about the troot and we can’t wait to start the project!!!
Matilda
Dissection of a brown trout
Practising removing a dead ovum with a turkey baster
June 13th and 14th saw plenty of angling action along the shores of the lochs of Kirbister and Harray. This was part of the Stronsay School’s annual AFYD fishing trip to the Orkney Mainland which involved S5 pupils who had recently transferred to Kirkwall Grammar School and the S2 and S3 pupils who joined the seniors on the Friday.
The weather which had been very pleasant for the last few days had decided to take a turn for the worse and by Thursday morning, a stiff cold north-westerly breeze was sweeping across the county. Even though the original plan was to head for the Harray Loch and spend the day there, the weather conditions were not ideal and fishing the Kirbister Loch first was a tempting option which could help hook a few trout before moving to Harray in the afternoon. A quick vote took place on the minibus and trying Kirbister first gathered an overwhelming majority of 1 vote to nil (3 abstentions…)! This, however, doesn’t mean our anglers didn’t care, they were just too happy to fish either loch!
Decision time for Keith…
By 9:45, the flies hit the water and no long after, the first trout were caught. dark flies such as Bibios and Black Zulus seemed to be the favourites on the day. Jim Erskine, who had kindly accepted to help us for the two days and myself could not help but noticing how much more mature and confident our anglers had become; they were covering a lot more water by taking a couple of steps between each cast, they could deal with most tangles themselves, change their own flies, etc…
After a few trout had been safely landed and that everyone had grabbed a sandwich, it was time to head for the “big water”… The Bochan Skerries, situated within walking distance of the Ring O’Brodgar car-park seemed like a good idea, considering that by then, the wind had backed to a force 4 westerly. Keith and Craig managed to hook a trout each in what was very tricky conditions indeed.
Day 2 didn’t exactly run according to plan… As the minibus was on its way to pick up the junior Stronsay anglers off the pier, we received a phone call from Mr. King informing us that the ferry would be late: the Varagen was involved in the rescue operation of the Lady K off the Calf of Eday… However, the kind weather made up for the delay and by 11:00, our four senior anglers were giving the Kirbister brownies a hard time around the wee island and the younget team were casting their baits in the loch’s peaty waters. It wasn’t long before Thomas reeled in a typical Kirbister trout but it’s not so much for this angling feat that Thomas made himself noticed as for wearing the latest fashion article: a pair of home-made safety glasses using a coat-hanger and bits of clear plastic! James, Jack and Matthew gave fly-fishing a good try but the finicky fish were out of range and very difficult to lure. Daniel and Ieuan preferred to stick to bait fishing. Thanks to Jim, some of the older pupils were shown an old trout fishing method called “dapping” which consist in using a floss line and letting a big bushy fly skip across the waves: Kevin managed to master the technique and landed a nice brownie.
Thomas with his trout and... his home-made safety glasses!
Everybody enjoyed the trip which wouldn’t have happened without the support of Mr. Erskine who spent both days coaching our young anglers, Mr. King who accompanied the junior on the Friday, Linda who is always so helpful when it comes to bookings and paperwork and the KGS management who agreed to release Cameron, Craig, Keith and Kevin for the two days. Finally, I want to thank all our pupils whose politeness, respect for each other and sense of humour make every school trip so enjoyable.
Mr. P
Daniel waiting for a bite.Kevin trying his hand at dapping.More competition on the loch with a red-throated diver...
With a very late spring and strong winds battering the islands the previous week, there was no doubt that the Kirbister Loch would struggle living up to its reputation as a “beginner’s water”… From the information that could be gathered, Harray had been very cloudy lately, the competition on Hundland had been won by fishing “on the stones” where the water was just clear enough for the fish to see the flies and the near gale force winds had not spared Kirbister either.
On the Wednesday and Thursday, the Kirkwall Grammar School pupils were out on their annual angling trip, part of their end of term activities and they tackled the east shore of the loch. The going was tough and the Kirbister brownies were shunning flies and bait alike resulting in baskets which were certainly not what you would expect from this lovely little fishery at this time of year.. The shore which was chosen on the day of the competition was the west shore even though the wind direction was yet again uncertain, just like last year, and what was supposed to be a WNW ended up more like N…
At 10:30, after the 13 pupils from KGS and the Stronsay School gathered by the shore and were instructed about the rules and safety, the young fishermen started spreading along the bank; the fish were active and a few opportunistic fly-fishers made the most of it, like Craig Stout who landed two fish in the first ten minutes! However, this bonanza was to be short lived and soon after, the trout disappeared, not to be seen again for the rest of the day! It was interesting to see our young anglers using an array of different techniques: bait with bubble-floats, flies using spinning tackle and torpedo floats, flies on fly tackle, etc…
At 2:15, the whistle was blown and it was time to put away the rods and head for the weigh-in where Stuart Topp, the OTFA secretary, had set the scales. The competitors were split into 4 categories depending on age and fishing technique: Marcus Scholes was the winner of the Junior Bait section for the second time and his basket included a beautiful 1lb2 sea-trout. Logan Harcus won the Junior Fly section, Gareth Holmes won the Senior Bait section and Craig Stout was the Senior Fly section winner for the second year, with yet again a basket of 7 fish!
Congratulations to the young fishermen who had to show perseverance to land a few of those moody brownies! Thank you to all the helpers, volunteers and leaders: Mr. Erskine, Dr. Hall, Mrs. Heggarty, Jim Pettit and Stuart Topp. We also want to thank our sponsors for the prizes: WS Sinclair’s, Stockan’s and William Shearer’s.
Another angling trip is planned next week for 13th & 14th June on Harray and Kirbister with a group of anglers from the Stronsay School (including some S5s who recently transferred to KGS).
Here are the results of the OTFA / AFYD Junior Competition which was held on the Kirbister Loch on Friday 31st May 2013. A detailed report will be published shortly.
OTFA / AFYD Junior Angling Competition (31st May 2013)
I’m delighted to publish this report which Cameron Stout, the Class 2 teacher at North Walls emailed me. It was written by his pupils for the April issue of The Blether, “the newsletter of the community of Hoy and Walls” and when reading it, we can tell how much enthusiasm and commitment went into the project:
Brown trout fry, ready to be released by Levi in the Ore Burn
Away back at the beginning of Term 3 (January), Class 2 got some trout eggs from Jim Erskine so that we could take part in the Troot in the Shed project. Everyone was very excited about it since some of us did a similar project a few years ago and we were really looking forward to taking part in it again.
First of all we had to prepare a tank in the shed – the shed is best because it is at a cooler temperature. If the eggs and baby fish (alevins and fry) get too warm it can kill them.
We put the eggs in the tank carefully. We had to watch in case the eggs went white. That meant they had died. We were fortunate though, because not many of them died. Out of our total of 300, only about 40 didn’t survive. We think it’s possibly because they had to make an extra journey across to North Walls on the boat.
We had to check on the eggs frequently, recording the air temperature and water temperature, and whether any had died. If they had, we had to remove them from the tank within 24 hours.
As they grew, we noticed that their yolk sacs started to shrink. The yolk sac contains the food that they use when they are first hatched. At this stage, they are approximately 1.5cm in length.
They were very small and their eyes looked gigantic. They wriggled in the corners of the tank – probably trying to hide among the stones.
There is a microscope in the science room so we used that to examine them closely. It was fascinating to see them so close up.
When they got older, their colour turned darker and we noticed that their yolk sacs had almost disappeared. At that stage they start being called fry and they come up to the surface to look for food.
Almost at the end of the project we took a walk to the Ore Burn to release them. Everyone had a shot of scooping out a net with between 5 and 20 in it, and transferring them to a bag of burn water that we had at the ready. The reason we do that is so that there is not too big a change of temperature, and so that they do not fall in from too high a height.
We took great care handling the troot as they were very small.
Now that they are in the burn, the survivors will probably stay under the brig until they’re a bit bigger and then they will head to the sea.
We learnt about life cycles and we can now compare the trout life cycle to the human life cycle and other parts of nature.
We would like to say thank you to Mr Erskine and the Orkney Trout Fishing Association for preparing the whole project and involving us in it. We hope to do it again.
Craig scooping the alevins before release in the Ore Burn
Spring was in the air on March 28th when the time had come to release the alevins hatched at the Stronsay School. The island was bathed in sunshine and the surface of the Meikle Water was hardly broken by a gentle breeze from the east.
The 200 odd young trout hatched at the Stronsay School were carried in a basin to the edge of the loch and then transferred into plastic pouches to allow every pupil to release a dozen fish each.
It was a good opportunity to learn about the wildlife with which our trout would be sharing their new habitat: we realised that the tiny alevins would need to be extra careful as many predators such as mergansers, herons, cormorants, eels, otters and even some of the bigger trout wouldn’t mind a little fishy snack! Our alevins would have a more modest diet for the first year, consisting mainly of daphnia, midges at various stages of development, freshwater shrimps and insects.
Pupils gently released the fry in the vicinity of weed beds to provide them with enough cover from predators, after checking the loch water temperature (3⁰C) was as close as possible to the water in which the alevins had been transported (4⁰C), in order to avoid thermal shock.
A big thank you to Mrs. Evans who accompanied the children and also to Steve, our janitor who supervised the pupils’ visits to our hatchery on a daily basis over the last couple of months.
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