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Girlsta Loch


JAStewart
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There is indeed Arctic Char in the loch. I have a photo of one taken on a ordinary fly rod about 20 years ago at da side away fae the road. It couldna be returned to the water because it was "foul hooked" and widna have survived the return so got the opportunity to see it. Weighed about 10-12 oz.

 

edit - unless that was the last one in the loch of course :(

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My best guess is that there still is an abundance of char in the Girlsta loch.

I saw 100s with in the early 1980s and I understand that after the loch became an SSI the nature consevancy council did a couple of survays in the 90s and a few years ago and also found plenty of char. Interestingly there might be two different species or strains of char one that grows quite big and fat gets to about the size of a herring and another that feeds of plankton copepods is long and thin and grows no more that a few ozs. When the loch has been netted nothing was found in the deeper parts all the fish were caught in the shallower waters. Spawning is a good month earlyer than the brown trout and I suspect that the large numbers of shoaling char are predated apoun by the native brown trout and this is the main reason for finding fish, that are significantly larger, than most of the other Shetland lochs. The largest one I have seen taken in Girlsta was 8 lbs. The times I have measured the depth of the loch I found it to be just over 60 foot but there may well be deeper holes over 70 foot. Some earlyexperimental work with these char showed that the fish were difficult to rear on artifical dry diets but some freshwater plankton worked well. Adult fish adapted to commercial farming conditions and did well at high temperatures. Little seems to have been done to protect the char since the loch became an SSI but the Scottish Natural Heritage may be working away quietly behind the scenes.

Oh well an interesting topic amazing how the memories flood back even after 25 to 30 years thanks for posting.

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There are still char in Girlsta. I slipped this fly caught one back last week after a quick photo.

 

http://i700.photobucket.com/albums/ww2/rasmie/Shetland%20Troots/Char-004.jpg

 

Managed to find a spot off the NW corner of the isle a couple of years ago where the sounder showed 76 feet depth but I don't know how accurate that would be.

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I'm 99% sure it is a char. I was 100% sure up till you posted :lol:

 

Rainbows often have pink hued flanks but the red belly of the char is probably its most distinctive feature. They could more easily be confused with Brook trout (which are maybe a form of char anyway :? )

 

I'd never heard of a second "dwarf" strain of char in Girlsta. I suppose that netting would be the only way you'd ever get to see those ones.

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According to Google Earth, the elevation of the Girlsta loch is 29m, which is about 96ft. If the loch itself is 74-76ft deep, that puts the bottom of the loch about 20ft above sea level, assuming that the elevation used by Google is Mean Sea Level. This helps to visualise how deep the loch is.

 

On the subject of loch deepness, I was always led to believe that the Gonfirth loch is of great vertical extent - anybody with a lead line back this up?

I noticed it didn't appear on the posted link of loch depths, but maybe it's not big enough (in area)?

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The photo shown above looks like a nice little charr and I think it was caught recently or in the late summer period.

The males are the ones that colour up with red bellies and get white tinges to the fin margins. Looks like your photo shows a young male just starting to mature, will become fully mature in early October. It was nice to learn that you returned it to the Loch as many would have taken it back to show their pals what they caught. It looks to be in very good condition for a char. What weight would this fish be? Great things digital cameras thanks for sharing this with us and well done not many catch these fish on rod and line, I wonder why this is the case as the loch is teaming with char, perhaps the male fish become a little more aggressive during the breeding season and so may attack a fly, or perhaps a case of they need more energy, so turn to feed on flies though the gut contents of the charr I have seen did not appear to have any and few are taken on a fly at any time of the year. I dont know of any being taken on a spinner as they dont eat other small fish. I hope more anglers adopt the catch and release policy and the digital camera is put to good use. I bet someone will have developed software for working out the weight of a fish from a photograph,

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The photo shown above looks like a nice little charr and I think it was caught recently or in the late summer period.

The males are the ones that colour up with red bellies and get white tinges to the fin margins. Looks like your photo shows a young male just starting to mature, will become fully mature in early October. It was nice to learn that you returned it to the Loch as many would have taken it back to show their pals what they caught. It looks to be in very good condition for a char. What weight would this fish be? Great things digital cameras thanks for sharing this with us and well done not many catch these fish on rod and line, I wonder why this is the case as the loch is teaming with char, perhaps the male fish become a little more aggressive during the breeding season and so may attack a fly, or perhaps a case of they need more energy, so turn to feed on flies though the gut contents of the charr I have seen did not appear to have any and few are taken on a fly at any time of the year. I dont know of any being taken on a spinner as they dont eat other small fish. I hope more anglers adopt the catch and release policy and the digital camera is put to good use. I bet someone will have developed software for working out the weight of a fish from a photograph,

 

Just out of interest Madfish - How did you manage to analyse the gut content of the char you have seen without actually gutting the fish ( or causing it some serious discomfort prior to release) or is is there a digital camera on the market for this sort of thing?

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