How to spot and avoid salmon redds

It’s that time of year again when salmon, sea trout and brown trout spawn. If you are grayling or coarse fishing and need to wade, avoiding ‘redds’ is good practice.

Redds are nests where salmonid fish have laid their eggs, which if disturbed and trampled on by wading anglers could cause egg and fry mortality. Therefore, in winter, anglers should take care to avoid such areas and give a wide berth to spawning salmon, trout and sea trout.

How to identify a redd

Look for clean, recently disturbed gravel. The act of creating a redd involves the female salmon or trout disturbing gravel, which makes a circular area varying from around one square foot in size, to metres by metres long, that has cleaner looking gravel than the surrounding area. Eggs are laid inside the gravel nest, where the male fertilises them before they are covered up by the spawning fish.

Redds can appear as a combination of a mound and a depression in the gravel. The mound, where the eggs are located, will be downstream of the depression. Below, a few images of salmon and trout redds.

With Welsh salmon stocks under threat, avoiding redds and adult spawning fish is just one thing anglers can do to help preserve future stocks.

Salmon Poaching

Natural Resources Wales is encouraging the public to report any illegal fishing incidents to help salmon and sea trout populations.

Illegal fishing can have a devastating impact on local fish populations, with numbers coming under particular threat during the salmon and trout spawning season, which usually occurs from around November to January.

At this time of year, keep an eye out for any netting in rivers, signs of poaching such as disturbed banks, dead fish or hidden nets. It is also very important to report any lamping activity seen along the upper reaches of rivers.

Please report to the NRW incident hotline on 0300 065 3000 or Crime stoppers on 0800 555 111.

It is now easier than ever to report an incident, which can now be done online, as well as by telephone: https://ffurflenni.cyfoethnaturiol.cymru/s/incident-report/

Further information can be found here.