The increase seems to be related to migrations. The general increase of nominal coastal catches is related to increased fishing effort and better reporting of catch data. Compared to 1995, the statistical catch from Lake Peipsi decreased somewhat due to low catch of sparling. Catch in Lake V rtsj rv increased. The stock of vendace is increaseing during last years.
Regulations are difficult to implement due to the transboundary character of the lake.
In the other freshwaters catches higher due to including of additional water bodies into statistics. 44300 1-year old rainbow trout were released into the Baltic Sea in 1996. 1300 crayfish were transfered into other waterbodies. As earlier the status of crayfish is better in the waterbodies of Island Saaremaa, in the rivers Paadremaa, Soodla and in the lakes of Southern-Estonia. Most frequent disease was burn-sprot disease.