Newtyle Beat Fishing Season Opening For 2008

A group of Newtyle beat non fishers from the opening day on the 15th of January 2007. Below is a photo of a reporter from STV (and myself) doing some media coverage for the lunchtime news.

Click here for the BBC's news clips in both audio & video of our stance on Newtyle last January.


The Newtyle Beat will again be sticking to it's stance of not opening on the traditional 15th of January Tay opening date. Newtyle (as last year) will be opening on the 1st of February to allow spawning fish to go about their important business undisturbed and also to give the many kelts a few weeks extra to avoid being weakened even further by being caught by the anglers.

30 years ago we had harder winters and spawning overall started earlier each year and the abundance of kelts still in the Tay were equalled by a huge runs of early spring salmon. These days very few early spring salmon are present in the Tay in January so any angling pressure impacts only on late spawning fish and kelts.

As a full time ghillie I would love to see the entire river adopting a much later opening but sadly tradition & timeshare (at the moment) seems to be more important than the salmon. In my opinion a 15 February opening day with the river open until the 15th of November would be far more appropriate these days (with a good catch & release policy) as clearly the climate has altered in the last 20 years or so.

Click here to book up a February fishing day on the Newtyle beat

Jock Monteith