11 September 2022 News/Editorial
Well, it might not have been a deluge of biblical proportions, but as compared to the past 6 months, it seemed like it. 3 feet of welcome water has made the poor old Tweed look like a proper river again.
Summer 2022 was as dry as that of 1976, until autumn began, when the ‘76 vintage cork finally flew out of the champagne bottle. September and October 1976 had the highest rainfall in 250 years of records, and most places in the UK ended the year with either entirely average or above average rainfall.
With more rain forecast tonight, and with hurricanes suspiciously queuing up (Danielle is the latest) in the Atlantic, it would be no surprise if we are in for something similar, albeit most immediate forecasters predict a calm week once the rain tonight is over. If so, after the past largely unproductive fishing week, the dice may, at long last, be tilting in the anglers’ favour. Ghillies (I use the word advisedly because “boatmen” and “boats” have hardly been in point recently) and anglers have had a terrible time; spare a thought for both and what they have had to endure, maybe especially ghillies who have had to suffer day after day of almost wholly rubbish angling conditions. Theirs has not been an easy job in summer 2022.
Brief sojourns to the river are a poor guide as to what is happening, but I tried the tail of our Cauld stream last night, the water still arguably too dark for success, but I saw a number of fish head and tailing, moving through you would say. After their long imprisonment in those big pools between Coldstream and the sea, over the last few weeks/months, who can blame them?
The big question, when and if we start catching some, will there be any fresh, silver fish amongst them? We will find out soon enough.
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Amongst so much sad news recently, the fishing world has lost one of its great characters, Pud Murray, long time and much loved boatman on the Junction. Many of you will have fond memories of him, mainly fishing. Mine were confined to the various Boatmen’s Meetings held annually/biannually with the River Tweed Commission/Tweed Foundation, these meetings being devised to ensure communications are maintained between those who work on the river and those who manage it.
Amongst much serious business, Pud could always be relied on to interrupt the sometimes dull proceedings with a quip or a joke, to general hilarity and amusement. Despite being (nominally) in charge and supposedly keeping order, I never found it easy to keep a straight face when Pud was in full flow!
He will be sadly missed by all those who knew him and fished with him over many years.
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The RTC has responded to the Government consultation on voluntary/mandatory 100% catch and release with a response broadly approving/supporting efforts to increase catch and release to around the 95% (Tweed least year was at 93.5%).
Mandatory 100%, involving a change in the law, was not supported both because law changes are inflexible (voluntary measures having the same effect being much preferred), and because it is acknowledged that between 1% and 3% of salmon caught by the rods die in the process of being caught. There is something offensive about returning to the river a salmon that has already died, or will certainly die because it is bleeding too badly.
Of course, “voluntary” only works if everyone plays the game fairly. We all know of/have heard of those determined killers who will pretend a salmon has died when being caught, when in reality it has not. The sanction that, if there is any doubt, the angler is not allowed to keep any such salmon must be rigorously enforced by owners and boatmen alike.
Quite how this will work with the commercial netting at Gardo is anyone’s guess, at the very least one hopes that the Government will somehow stop Gardo killing salmon up to and including 31st May every year. Whether you call it a heritage netting operation or not, the fact remains that it is still killing wild Atlantic salmon, when no other net in Scotland or England/Wales is.
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