10 October 2021 News/Editorial
The flood on Wednesday, over 7ft at Sprouston, was a watershed in every sense. On Thursday some 30 salmon were caught, only 6 below Kelso and not one below Coldstream. Since then the catch figures show an interesting pattern of fish throughout the system, if most either now above Galashiels or still languishing below Tillmouth, with seemingly a bit of a gap in between.
It would be nice to see a few silver fish now that the gates are open; we have caught 77 here since 1st September, and Malcolm’s red pen, which he has used to mark all silver fish caught post 1st September for some years now, has remained, untroubled, in the drawer. I hear they caught a silver one, all one and half pounds of it, at Wark last week.
In days of yore, a flood now in October would set it up for the next month, our most productive weeks, given good conditions, being the last two weeks of October and the first two in November. If only that were true now, but then you never quite know with fishing.
It is to be calm and colder next week, ideal for good old fashioned autumn fishing, depending on how many good old fashioned fish there still are. Not only should they take your fly better, especially if there is a frost, but that coldness could trigger their instincts to get a move on.
As ever, how many fish there will still be, and where, is the question?
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Oddly, the Barents Observer, that sine qua non and well known Arctic Circle rival to the Times, has become a regular read. I am not sure why I persist in writing of the traumas being suffered by the Norwegian/Finnish River Tana, as per the latest edition of the BO, except maybe because “there but for the Grace of God….”
You will know that they closed the whole river to fishing for the 2021 season, so small is the number of Atlantic salmon spawners remaining in the Tana, which only four or five years ago was the most prolific salmon river in Europe.
Now it has been invaded by some 40,000 Pink salmon, and because there is no fishing, none of these invaders have been caught and killed, leaving them free to spawn. This should not disrupt the spawning of the Atlantic salmon, because they go to different places and at different times, but the concern is that these Pinks will become established and endemic, impossible to remove, long term, with heaven knows what result for the ecology of the river.
We would do well to register the troubles of other rivers and how quickly things can go pear shaped, even when, like us, you may be smugly thinking that their dramatic decline in spawners and their other “issues”, couldn’t happen here.
Arguably they both are, and could.
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Last Tuesday, early evening, tragedy struck in that lovely stream, the Upper Temple at Wark.
We are a community of Tweed ghillies/boatmen/guides, visiting and home grown fishers/anglers, proprietors, fishing shops and many more. Despite the odd grumble, we are all engaged in an harmonious and joyous pursuit, the noble and gentle art of fishing on a river we love. There is a bond, unspoken and invisible maybe, between us, but it is there, the amity of a shared pursuit and experience.
When one of that community departs in the course of doing what he loved most, we are the poorer for that, even if we had never seen or known him. We have all suffered a terrible loss, most especially, of course, his wife, close family and friends, to whom the shock and grief can only be imagined. On behalf of all of you, that is all of us, they have our most sincere and heartfelt sympathy.
His name was Eric Wardle. A fisherman. One of us.
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