12 November 2017 News/Editorial
The Tweed catch last week was 88 salmon and 7 sea trout, making the cumulative total, within 90% accuracy, to 11th November 2017, 6,044 salmon and 1,668 sea trout.
With just 2½ weeks to go, and little chance of much improvement in that total, you have to go back as far as 1984, 33 years ago, to find an annual figure as low.
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What more can I, or any of us, say?
No purpose can be served by going on about it.
Bar one smallish rise of water, fishing conditions have been good, for November, yet the scores last week were not.
Of all the bad years since the last good one in 2013, this year, 2017, has been the worst, despite fishing conditions right through the late spring, summer and autumn being as good as you could want.
Enough said.
As always, there is much to look forward to as 2018 hoves into view. Optimism is in every fisherman’s DNA, and 2018 has every chance of being much better than 2017.
As all you scholars will know, so that it hardly bears repeating, it was the English theologian Thomas Fuller in his travelogue “A Pisgah-site of Palestine and the Confines Thereof” (1650)
who first coined the phrase “It is always darkest just before the day dawneth”.
Was 2017 just before the dawn?
There are some positive reasons for thinking so……
…….of which some more next week.
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I will be doing some fishing this coming week, not that I want to, but despite slashing the price, nobody wants to take it, or at least no more than a small part, later on.
As things are, you can hardly blame them.
I will report back next week how I get on.
Curiously, I find it is rather nice to have the place to ourselves, for once…..and maybe that is the way to go.
In an undeniable buyers market for salmon fishing, one way to respond is to restrict the supply (of fishing), to bring buyers, on the one hand, and availability of fishing, on the other, into balance.
I, and other owners, might keep more fishing for ourselves, and in so doing also avoid some of the seemingly never ending complaints about how (badly) the river is run, lack of fish etc etc.
I’m beginning to warm to the idea.
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