news/editorial

11 August 2013 News/Editorial

Anticipating the autumn run is exciting, and this week saw just an inkling of how it could be when we get a bit more rain.

Rain from the south and east on Monday hit Teviot but nothing else, so it was the beats below Kelso which benefited with some reasonable, if not sparkling, catches; it is, after all, still early August.

Statisticians will caution against drawing any conclusions from the results of just one week and a comparatively small sample of fish caught, so what follows comes with a severe health warning.

In previous decades what you caught in August was small, largely grilse and Tweed’s mega year in 2010 might just have marked the beginning of the end of their predominance. The average autumn weight that year was around 7.5 to 8lbs, low because of the sheer numbers of small grilse.

And then in 2011, second half of August, the river was full, suddenly, of big fish. I gillied for a friend who caught 9, 90% of which were over 10lbs, hardly a grilse to be seen. Another rod, even earlier in the month, had caught 20, again mostly big. The average weight for 2011 in the autumn was nearer 11lbs, a sudden and very significant upwards shift.

2012 was a curious year, water everywhere and the fish too dispersed to make much of them, unless you were a tenant at Wark! The weights had reverted nearer to pre 2011, quite a lot of small grilse and the average around 8 to 8.5 lbs.

So the health warning comes with the prediction that, just maybe, 2013 is going to be more like 2011. Surprisingly big fish were preponderant in the mix of those caught last week, the majority being between 10 and 15lbs, some bigger. The quality was fantastic, good big, fresh, fat fish, absolutely no sign of the undernourishment of the “skinny grilse” which so worried many in earlier years.

Moreover I believe our few remaining nets reported the same, a number of bigger fish.

So far it is very different to the 1990s and early 2000s when August fish were grilse and averaged about 5lbs.

And it sort of makes sense with the Tay, traditionally a great multi sea-winter salmon river, having such a good spring in 2013 and, of course, what happened here in 2011.

Will 2013 herald a further step in the process of change, away from grilse towards salmon? It seems likely.

It could, indeed, be exciting.