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I have fished for as long as I can remember, certainly since the 1960s, when I used to wait for the incoming tide each day off the Barra lighthouse in Salvador, Brazil, with prawn baited hooks on a length of mono, or a baited crab net. These days I am to be found in the hills of Northern Wales with a fly rod and a small tin of scruffy flies trying to tempt a wild trout.
I have fly fished in Canada, Norway, Spain, Ireland and Scotland but am as happy on my local rain-fed stream in the driving wind and rain. I enjoy all fly fishing methods but find upstream wet-fly particularly satisfying. My fly-tying leaves much to be desired but my small Tummel and Clyde-style flies seem to work. A few years ago I fell into the trap and expense of collecting new gear, but have found this to be an encumbrance. My philosophy is "leave the gear behind and spend time on observation and melding in". 
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Sunday
Jul312011

The world's rarest salmonid?

DateSunday, July 31, 2011 at 9:31AM

Photo by Wang Ching-hua

The Taiwanese "trout", the landlocked brook masu salmon, spends its life in the upper reaches of the Tachia river in western Taiwan. This protected species is a relic of Taiwan's most recent ice-age, when the Taiwan Strait became a land bridge as ocean water was transformed into polar glaciers, which cut off the migratory paths. 

Since this salmonid needs a low temperature to survive and reproduce, it only lives in several sections of the streams high up in the mountains that are only a few kilometres in length. A study has found that the equal temperature isotherm which defines the habitat of the salmonid has moved 1.6 kilometers upstream in one decade due to global warming.

How many fish survive? it's difficult to know, but perhaps only about 1600.

 

Source: Wei-Chun Tseng and Chi-Chung Chen
Dept of Applied Economics, National Chung Hsing University, Taichung 40246, Taiwan 
Available online 3 August 2007. Journal: Ecological Economics.

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