The Ballynahinch system of interconnecting lakes, streams and rivers has a large capacity of producing young salmon and trout before they make their journey to the sea. The maintain this healthy state of affairs, the Ballynahinch Catchment Management Programme has been set up to ensure that the system will continue to have high levels of productivity for a long time into the future.

The main area of work in the catchment management programme is maintaining pristine spawning and nursery areas in the tributary streams. Much work has been carried out to fence the banks alongside spawning streams to exclude livestock. This enables vegetation to grow, stabilising the banks and allowing the deeper holding pools not to be washed out.

Christmas tree logs and riprap have been added to streams that have badly eroded banks and spawning gravels are added to areas where excessive gravel has been washed downstream. Gravels are turned every two years on the major spawning beds on the system to ensure that they are free from siltation. The silt that is carried down in floods blocks the gravels preventing oxygen getting to salmon and trout eggs.

Regular electrofishing surveys are carried out and have proven that the enhanced streams have much higher numbers of fish of all life stages than prior to the improvement works.

During the spawning time of December and January, a small number of fish are taken from different spawning streams throughout and they are stripped of their eggs. These eggs are fertilised and kept in our hatchery until April when they are returned as unfed fry to the same location from where they were taken. This method ensures a maximum survival of egg to fry stage, a time when most mortality occurs in the wild. The most important management practice, however, is improving the habitat in which the juvenile fish live.

The Ballynahinch Catchment Management Programme is an ongoing plan and in 2005 the construction of an electrostatic fish counter was completed. This counter is a powerful management tool enabling us take further steps to conserve and improve current salmon stocks in the Ballynahinch System.

The closure of the commercial mixed stock drift net fishery for salmon in 2007 will also help to increase our runs by up to 30%.  The will mean for better spawning and a speedier increase in our stock levels.