Over 25 years rod catches of Atlantic salmon Salmo salar increased proportionately as stock size increased (r 2 =0.581, P< 0.001), with no overall trend between exploitation rate and stock size (r 2 =0.016, P> 0.5). On a 15 year sub-set of these data annual effort (P=0.804) and flow (P=0.339) had little significance relative to stock size (P< 0.01) on variation in rod catches. Stock size, time, effort and flows had no influence on inter-annual variation of rod exploitation rate (r 2 =0.094,P =0.880). Pairwise correlation between variables confirmed these results. In 1998, weekly effort contributed significantly to overall catch variation (P< 0.001), while weekly flow did not (P=0.438). These results are discussed in relation to the utility of rod catch data for deriving estimates of stock for spawning target compliance purposes.