news/editorial

11 October 2015 News/Editorial

With the exception of a very few beats below Coldstream, it is sad to report that the weather, or lack of it, has spoiled this autumn’s fishing.

There has been no rain and even less wind, the days have been characterised by bright, dry and extraordinarily calm conditions, the worst possible for salmon fishing.

With no proper flood for over 6 months, the river bottom is filthy, the height so low that many of the pools are unfishable and those that are fishable at all extend to about 50 yards of stream, rather than the normal 200 yards or more.

And with the forecast indicating no more substantial rain for at least the next week, maybe 2 weeks, following an equally dry September, October could be one of the driest since 2007 in Coldstream (when there was barely 1 inch).

Worse still, where the water comes from, in the west at Eskdalemuir, October is on track to being the driest recorded in recent times (the average is a soaking 8 inches) with barely 0.75 of an inch so far.

All this is after September’s miserable 1 inch, when the September average at Eskdalemuir is 5 inches.

That the Tweed relies on rainfall from the west is obvious when you look at the respective annual totals for Eskdalemuir and Coldstream.

I tell my English friends, who think it rains all the time in Scotland, that the Coldstream rainfall is the same as London’s. It is not quite true (London 23.3 inches; Coldstream 27.5 inches) but not far from it, and both are very dry places. The driest Coldstream year of late was 1989, with a paltry 16 inches.

Compare these to Eskdalemuir’s astonishingly wet annual average of 70 inches.

The disappointment is that, unlike 2014 when there simply weren’t the numbers of salmon, what salmon are still to come (and there have been more this year) will struggle to get much above Coldstream as levels quite possibly sink to their lowest levels yet this year, over the next week or so.

It is something none of us can do anything about, but it is a shame for visiting anglers that they are seeing the river in such a comparatively poor, depleted state, and with a much reduced amount of water to fish in…….as indeed it is also a shame for all the boatmen trying to do their best for their customers in consistently difficult conditions.

Not that the word “boatman” is quite right this year, the act of actually rowing a boat being very much a minority activity, most boats remaining resolutely tethered to the bank for weeks on end. We have two here which have yet to get into the water.

After such a poor 2014, it is cruel that 2015 has been blighted by drought. For Tweed fishing, and for most other rivers (except the mighty Tay), too much water is always better, even after losing days to flooding, than too little.

If I am allowed to return to an old hobby-horse, and with the Government’s decision pending on further beaver releases, this is just the sort of autumn when those who say that salmon can get past beaver dams in floods are demonstrably wrong. Our vital spring salmon will spawn in October, and, if there is no flood very soon, they will have great difficulty getting up to their spawning grounds anyway.

That is without any of those darling little cutey furry things’ lodge-building activities getting in their way.

Instead of contemplating more beaver introductions and making life more difficult for our salmon, would it not, for once, be nice if Government went on the front foot and allowed us to do more to control the numbers of goosanders.

At the bottom of the Wark water two weeks ago, I counted a flock of 170 goosanders; this was no estimation, they sat there quite contentedly, basking in the sunshine, in the middle of the river as I counted every one.

Now let us assume that one flock of 170 (and of course there are many many more than that on the whole Tweed catchment) eats 12 small fish each (trout, salmon (and grayling) fry, parr and smolts) per day (we have a picture in our fishing hut of 6 fry and parr disgorged by one bird for just one meal, and they must have more than one meal per day).

That is 170 x 12 x 365=744,600 devoured small fish per annum from that one flock.

We can do nothing about drought, but we need neither beavers nor nearly as many goosanders.

It will need brave decision making, but it is time that (a) the Rewilding Scotland brigade were told to back off re beavers and (b) the RSPB and friends were told that there are vast numbers of goosanders, they are doing great harm to our young fish, and that their protected status will be removed.

That really would give those who care about our salmon something to cheer.