Assessing the status of Scottish Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar L.) stocks using reported catch data: a modelling approach to account for catch and release in the rod and line fishery

Scottish Marine and Freshwater Science Vol 5 No 11

This report describes a modelling approach which has been developed to correct the reported catch of Scottish rod fisheries by accounting for recaptures associated with these data. In the absence of direct counting systems, the abundance of Atlantic salmon stocks in Scotland is generally estimated indirectly using reported rod fishery data. The widespread adoption of catch and release in Scottish rod fisheries provides a challenge for such assessment techniques, however, as a proportion of fish released from the rod fishery may be re-caught and hence inflate the catch statistics by appearing in the reported data more than once.