10 April 2013 News/Editorial
The clue was at Milne Graden last Monday Ist April. With most beats registering zero, no April fool, Milne Graden, well below Coldstream, had 4.
That was the start of a run of spring fish. Time alone will tell how large it will be or how long it will go on, but it is not every week that beats in recent years have recorded 8s and 9s for a day’s spring fishing.
The joker is the temperature; with water levels steady and never more than 36 degrees, almost unbelievably low for early April, the salmon are mainly below Kelso, not yet spread out and can therefore seem more numerous than they really are.
But there is no denying it is encouraging. Is it a herald of change? Who knows and it is far far too early to draw any conclusions. For most of its known rod fishing history, Tweed has been a late river with the spring predominance of the 1930s-1970s the exception.
Extraordinarily, we have a river where you can catch fresh run salmon from 1st February to 30th November. With recent statistics showing that of Tweed’s 5 year annual average catch of 15,500 salmon, only 2,000 are caught in the spring, the need to preserve these (comparatively few) early running fish is paramount.
Memories are short and whilst we can celebrate one good week’s fishing so far in 2013 for those beats below Kelso, and hopefully for those beats above Kelso in the near future as things warm up, remember both 2009 and 2010 were pretty poor springs (2009 especially so) and their children will be due to come back in 2014 and 2015.
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