Marine Scotland has announced the gradings for Scottish salmon rivers following changes to its approach in modelling the conservation status of rivers.
These gradings first came into force in April 2016 in order to regulate exploitation and determine which measures were necessary to protect the declining conservation status of wild salmon.
However, many complaints were received as anglers and custodians felt the methodology did not adequately capture the true picture of stocks in certain waters and this has now been refined further.
Scotland's 173 rivers have now been classified and their gradings can be searched online at https://www.gov.scot/Resource/0054/00542420.pdf
Rivers with a Category 3 rating will have to apply mandatory catch and release.
