Atlantic Salmon
(Salmo salar)
Scotland’s King of Fish finds a home in the River Endrick and its tributary streams. You can watch salmon jumping at the Pots of Gartness from September to November, and it’s also worth trying to spot young salmon and brown trout from the Endrick footbridge at the bottom of Drumtian Road.
Salmon are famed for their epic migrations but the young fish are with us in our waters all year round. They live in the streams where they hatch, eating insects and other invertebrates that either live in the water or are unlucky enough to fall in.
In winter, the youngsters hide under rocks all day then come out at night to feed. Young salmon defend a feeding territory in the same way as trout, but they live in shallower water.
When they have grown into two to three-year-old “smolts”, the salmon head out to sea in spring to start their migration.
Fascinating fact:
Atlantic salmon who migrate from Scottish waters can travel as far as Greenland.
The salmon live in the sea for a year or two then return to their home rivers to spawn. Most adults are only in our rivers from late summer until December.
In the spawning grounds, females lay their eggs in the gravel of fast-flowing streams for the males to fertilise. Atlantic salmon are capable of spawning more than once, but many lose condition on the way upriver because they don’t eat on the journey, and die after they reproduce.
Salmon are an important food source throughout their lives: for kingfishers and dippers when small, cormorants and goosanders when medium-sized, and seals and dolphins when they are fully grown at sea. We humans of course love to eat them too; they are the most important species used in Scotland’s fish farming industry.
Salmon are not especially rare but they are declining. They need very clean, well-aerated and cool water to thrive, so the warming of seas and rivers is affecting their survival rates.
Did you know
Some male salmon become sexually mature when they’re small without ever going to sea. They bravely compete with the returning big males to fertilise eggs.
