loch awe pike

try putting sovereign super baits into your search engine as i think its the same company. a bit dutch like!

HI pete i belive that the reason that the north eastern corner of a water is a good spot is in most cases it gets the sun most of the day ie south facing. or maybe not just a thought.

I could live with barramudi farming! far better climate to work in! know of any vacancies? I know very little of cods feed requirements but i am sure that once the stock becomes fully domesticated after a few generations and with good brood stock seletion that feed conversions will improve greatly.

Hi John i appreciate the manner in which you address this subject as it is fair to say that it is a subject of interest to many including myself. i will if possible answer all of your questions if i cannot i will find out for you and answer at a later date if that is ok. There is reasearch ongoing i think into the use of vegatable proteins to replace or partially replace fish proteins. however i belive that in the fresh water stages of growth that an invertebrate or similar thinking along these lines this bneing my personnel veiw. As for what the diet is made up of it usually consists of between 45% to 60% of protein 20% to 30% between 20% to 30% ash then the rest is made up of carbohydrates fibre and phosphorus. The fish used varies a bit details of which i am not 100% of but if you are interested i can find out. and yes feed bills are on the increase. As for the question of how i see fish farming in say 20 or so years well i would like to think that will still be here and i hope thriving as fish are a good nutritional meal for any one, but as we hear every week that sea stocks are being over fished and that fish stocks are declining. I dont pretend for one min that its perfect but will say that salmon farming as an industry is only 30 years old so still in its infancy, but farming fish is as old as the hills. It just needs to find the right way to see it into the future.So to answer your question about the future of fish farming? well depends which species you farm who knows? As for the restocking of our seas well i dont know much about cod and would need some help to first of all to understand a cods natural life cycle but i feel that it is the fish lower down the food chain ie sand eels that need the attention as they are the key to most predatory fish,birds,whales and dolphin and not forgetting man. But its a sad day when even the humble mackerel is far less common than once apon a time in the not to distant past. I hope this has helped in some way John and would gladly go on discussing these issues furthur. I dont have all the answers but do care enough to at least explore possibilities and try and come up with some answers.

Well the figures i used are the ones that i was taught at college and the ones in which i try to achive personnely my piont was to say that not all salmon farmers go about their day without concideration for the environment or care for the fish we rear. I take pride in my work and do all that i can to ensure that i have healthy good quality fish and that what do has the bare minimum impact on the environment. Also i agree that habitat improvement is the key to a rivers health but i fear that time is already running out for some stocks of wild fish and that failure is what we are faced with. Also i am not for one min suggesting that rivers be stocked with farmed fish as to get to that stage would be worse than failure as to loose the original stock in the first place would be a crime to nature. but like i said if you can improve the fertility rate and increase survival to the piont of hatch then surely that has to be one option that cant be dissmissed.

Well i would just like to give a fish farmers point of veiw on the subject of feed. I hear all the time of quotes that it takes between 3 and five ton of fish meal to produce 1 ton of salmon. in my experiance as a fish farmer (which is 15 years)i think that it would be impossible to feed salmon 5 ton of feed and receive only one ton growth. we have a system that monitors how much feed we use, and it involves a simple calculation which is Total feed fed divided by total weight gained this gives you a feed conversion ratio. In my line of work the target of this feed coversion ratio is 1.1 to 1 now that spelled out is 1.1 ton of fish feed to produce 1 ton of salmon. now i dont think that is unreasonable do any of you? Now i am also a very keen angler i also have an interest in wild fish stocks also.and the reason i belive that nothing is done about replenishing wild stocks is MONEY! who is going to pay for it? and who is supposed to pay for it? The technology is available today its just no one will foot the bill to get it going. The answer is that fish reared for the wild are returned to the wild before they reach the stage that they require an artificial diet and allowed to fend for them selves. It then is just a case of numbers which is why fish lay down so many eggs in the wild. But hatchery techniques today can improve survival rates of eggs by first of all improving the fertilization at stripping then by good husbandry while they are incubating. Once the fish hatch they should be returned to their natural environment to fend for themselves let instinct take its course. this needs to be continued until the fish stocks are healthy enough to sustaine them selves while still under commercial pressure. I could keep going but i wont but i will say that its nice to know that people are thinking about and that every comment made shows that thought has gone into this subject. they say that fishermen are the worst fish farmers because they expect perfection every time.