news/editorial

11 July 2021 News/Editorial

At a pinch, the Tweed may have caught 130 salmon for the month so far to 11th July, eleven days, or approx one third of the way, through the allotted 31. In 2020 we caught 1,836 in July. Ahem. The chances of getting to that total this year are similar to those of yours truly winning the Open Golf at Royal St George’s.

As depression creeps further and further into our psyche of salmon numbers this year, there are two solutions.

First, forget about last year, pretend it never happened, and only believe that the precedent numbers for July are these:

2019 572

2018 253

2017 879

2016 660

2015 701

Suddenly, 130 in the first 11 days doesn’t look quite so bad, we should at least beat 2018. Maybe.

Secondly, the salmon world, as we know only too well, is full of surprises. We have all been conditioned into thinking that the future is (earlier running) late spring and summer salmon, that autumn salmon and grilse are distinctly yesterday. What if that isn’t so? What if 2021 provides a huge grilse run, there are already signs of something happening on the Dee? What if the summer salmon come in later, in August/September/October even, and in large numbers?

It could happen, chin up, things may not be nearly as bad as they seem now. They seldom are. As for next week, it could be a hot one.

--00--

It is always good to get out, to chat to your mates, to listen to stories and find out what is going on.

A kind friend asked me to fish 10 days ago, the sun was beating down even at 9.30am and the river was dead low. Instead of fishing, three of us gathered around a cup of tea/coffee on the lovely hut veranda, and proceeded to put the world to rights. As one does.

First up was kit, when someone mentioned the word “Skagit”. I asked for a translation, having no idea what the word meant, was it a new disease/terrible physical affliction? After interpretation, yours truly uttered some home truths about the merits of “good old double tapers”, reluctantly admitting that the words “weight forward” and “10/11 weight” were just about comprehensible, if distinctly on the iffy side of acceptability. I could tell I was not carrying the day when informing the assembly that my father caught over 3,000 salmon in his life, a large cohort of which were on the same line (greased to be floating in the summer and ungreased to sink in the autumn) and that for autumn fishing he put on a black and yellow tube, and only changed it if it became too distressed, from catching so many fish, that it no longer resembled a fly, let alone its black and yellow origins.

We then turned to spey casting, when the words “Circle” and “Snap-T” entered the conversation, quickly followed by the even more alarming “Snake”, again finding myself at a loss, concerned that I had unwittingly entered a parallel universe. I learnt to single and double spey just post nappies, and have done them ever since, and have never found myself, blessed with a very strong backhand, at a loss to whack it out, no matter either the wind or which bank we were operating from. My friend, fishing on a both smart and top beat on another river, experimented with one of these “Snap” or “Circle” or “Snake” thingies. At lunchtime, his host, wearing a concerned and troubled air of the furrowed brow type, approached my friend, put his hand on his shoulder and said “If I see you doing those casts, even just once more, I will never ask you to fish here again”. A man after my own heart.

I was reminded of the troubles any surviving dinosaurs must have had, after the meteor strike which wiped out most of their friends; their world had suddenly changed, and nothing was recognisable, just as there is little in the fishing world of the 2020s which my father in the 1950s would recognise. When I open a fishing catalogue, or try to find something called “Norris” on the worldwide web/internetything, I can find almost nothing I would ever want, mainly because most of it I both do not understand and cannot afford the mortgage in order to buy.

Do you recall those prints/pictures of some worthy, upstanding, noble Victorian (when men were men) towering over the river, either no or very basic waders, a massive greenheart fishing rod, a simple line and single hooked, gut-eyed fly? A far cry from the winching kit and something called a “flying condom” on far too many cars’ rod carriers in these parts nowadays. Another world indeed.

It does no harm to remember that boy with a stick, string line and a bent pin.

It was a simple sport then, it still is. But not if you can find Mr Norris and his like on the interweb. I fear we may have lost much of the romance and purity of it all.

Forever sadly.

--00--

As you would expect, the conversation led on to why, here in late June on one of Lower Tweed’s very best beats, looking over its most productive pool, there was barely a splash to be seen?

“Aha” said one of our number “it has to be trawlers, last year they were Covid-locked into port, and this year they are not, and are all out there fishing. Last year we were coming down with salmon right through the late spring and summer, this year there is a fraction of last year’s salmon numbers. The conclusion is obvious.” To be fair to those who argue such, this was a current reasoning in 2020 even while we were seeing, and catching, so many fish. How curious, the argument went, that there are so many fish in the year when we had complete lockdown, and in the many years before (and now the one since) we had so few, when the trawlers were fully operational?

At the risk of prejudging the issue, I have always been one who did not buy the trawlers theory, simply because it seems incredible that in these days of satellite surveyance and onshore policing of bycatch, and catch, that anyone anywhere could be catching and selling, without anyone spotting it, 1,000s of our salmon. As you will know, the only legal way of selling commercially caught salmon now, is if it has a tag, and salmon tags are not handed out hither and yon, especially not to pelagic trawlers. Is it really possible that 1,000s, even tens of 1,000s, of our salmon are being caught and sold, and have been for years past, without anyone noticing?

I thought I would find out more, so wrote to Fisheries Management Scotland who in turn, after agreeing with the “it ain’t possible” argument, put me onto the Atlantic Salmon Trust who have made a study, in depth, of this very point. To cut a very long and interesting story short, the conclusion is that no, it simply is not possible that the reason for the decline in numbers of our salmon is those pelagic trawlers and their massive nets. Of course, some salmon will be caught as bycatch, but analyses and monitoring of operating trawlers indicates that the numbers are tiny.

There is another, more prosaic maybe, but convincing argument, first put to me by Orri Vigfusson. Modern trawlers are enormous, highly sophisticated and vastly expensive, both to buy and to operate. Is it really credible that a trawler skipper will target salmon, which are few in number when looking at the huge North Atlantic, as opposed to those massive shoals of mackerel, of which there are many many millions and which they can easily find, follow, catch and sell for £ squillions to we oily fish health junkies?

What is, of course, possible, is that someone closer to shore, off the Northumbrian coast for instance, where the salmon congregate before running into Scotland’s east coast rivers, is catching them by setting the odd drift net, but at the risk of sounding blase, unless our fishery protection vessels are doing nothing, one cannot imagine such practices are rife and could hardly threaten the size of a whole year’s salmon run nationwide?

My fear is that, just as we blamed birds for everything, just as we obsess about seals and dolphins eating our fish, we are picking the obvious, the easiest target, simply because we need some sort of easy, tangible almost, answer to what is going on. The uncomfortable and unpalatable truth is that there is no such thing.

Of course, birds, seals, dolphins and pelagic trawlers’ bycatch of salmon all have some effect on the numbers of adult salmon returning to our rivers. But, not so long ago well over 1 million of our salmon were caught and killed by a combination of our own nets, the Northumbrian drift and T&J nets, by the Faroese longliners and by the Greenland fisheries (in 1971 the latter alone caught nearly 1 million salmon) before they could get into our rivers.

None of that happens now, and yet we have comparatively few fish. My belief is that something much more complicated is happening, well out to sea and beyond our control. The oceans are changing, the currents are moving, the temperature is rising, and our salmon are struggling to survive. If you believe in the endless adaptability of salmon to survive and prosper, then they will find a way, given time.

Our job is to deal with what we can control, the whole river environment, to ensure we put as many young fish into the sea as possible, because that is what we can do and, sooner or later, that consistency of effort, in pouring fit young wild smolts into the sea, year in, year out, will pay off. We have done much over the last 40 years, some say we have done the easy things.

There is more to be done to maximise the health and productivity of our rivers. Much of it is long term, it has to be done because we can, and we cannot in the high seas.

There is no time to lose.

--00--

I hear tell a pod of those brainy Orcas, specialists in eating seals for breakfast, lunch and dinner, are even now off the coast of Berwickshire. It is hard to imagine that they will go hungry, given the weight of numbers of those doey-eyed fat things lazing around on every beach and rock between Dunbar and the (Newcastle) Tyne.

For once, I find myself on the same side as the top predator. Culling by proxy. Sadly, they may not hang around here for long, but hopefully they all put on a few kilos while they are, and have a good mid summer holiday off those wonderful beaches at Bamburgh and beyond. The Farne Islands would be worth a visit, if the legions of massively overweight seals I saw there, on a birdy visit some years ago, are any judge.

Er, Orcas don’t eat salmon, do they?