The large juvenile trout exodus from fresh water to the sea which occurred in 1981 was not repeated in 1982. Climatic indicators suggest alternately good and poor years in the output of juvenile fish with a reduced recruitment to the fishery in the immediate future. The mean smolt age is likely to rise and the consequences of this will most likely be a reasonable post-smolt (or finnock) run and a diminution in the contribution of larger sea trout to the catch. Added to the poor run of exploitable fish in 1982, the angling season was curtailed by very dry weather which reduced effective fishing effort. In spite of this, yield per rod licence was almost identical to that in the previous year. However figures for the fishery districts suggest that fewer sea trout were captured. Draft net catches were up on those of 1981 by 68%. This had been anticipated in Fisheries Leaflet number 116 which suggested that trout from the larger juvenile exodus of 1981 would become exploited as one sea winter fish by this method: the recorded increase in the catch was almost certainly promoted by dry summer weather which confined sea trout to the estuaries. Both draft and drift net sea trout catches constituted a higher proportion of the salmon net catch in. 1982 than in 1981. The latter showed a marked reduction on the previous year but this evaluation of the data does not include returns from the Western and particularly the Northern fisheries regions where the salmon catch was said to be high.