news/editorial

13 April News/Editorial

“Never discuss religion or politics”, and we, properly brought up, post war baby boomers seldom do, that is unless you are preaching to the converted, safe ground only with those who think just like you.

There may not be much religion to discuss in fishing, except of course that most of us believe that a day on the river brings you closer to whomsoever is your particular God, a little piece of heaven on earth.

But there is politics in salmon fishing…..and probably always has been.

An East Coast train journey to London last week, after grappling with some work, found me reading the following lines:

“But the Board of Conservators was there to look after the interests of the rich man’s pleasure of whipping water upalong with rod and line, being allowed to fish a month before the net season opened and six weeks after it had closed; one law for the rich and another for the poor, aiy, that’s it.”

It could have been written yesterday (bar some of the more obscure language…”whipping water upalong by rod and line”, now who does that remind you of?), it is more or less exactly what the Scottish east coast nets are on about now. They think river boards indulge in gratuitous net bashing, under the guise of conservation.

The nets’ threat in 2014 to fish in the early spring was truly only a bargaining ploy; they want to fish further into the autumn. They will drop the demand to fish in the spring if they are compensated with more weeks fishing in the autumn and “six weeks after it had closed” would do them just fine.

Those lines were not, of course, written yesterday, or even in Buchan’s “John Macnab”, but in Henry Williamson’s “Salar The Salmon”, first published in 1935, nearly 80 years since.

It is one of those books I imagine I read in my youth, but probably never did.

Salar (the leaper) is a 20 lb cock fish and gets into all sorts of scrapes on his journey to (and up) his home river, including being blood sucked by a huge lamprey. Hopefully our SAC status as a river will not be compromised, for lampreys are a heavily protected species, if the pages reveal that both Salar and your scribe (for lamprey are revolting creatures) were relieved when the lamprey itself was attacked and reduced to mud by Myxine, the glutinous hag of Two Rivers, which hag could turn itself into slime (yuk), leaving Salar to travel on lamprey free.

Good stuff, but enough of that.

Underlying what Henry Williamson said in 1935 is exactly the feeling that the nets (and of course the few remaining poachers) have today, that river boards are there to serve the interests of the silver spoon-fed, rich toffs and plutocrats who own the bulk of the rod fishing rights on all Scottish salmon rivers.

Now, in terms of numbers, this allegedly down trodden minority of netsmen are very many fewer than they were even 30, let alone 80, years ago, but the sentiment can be as strong, if not stronger.

At a salmon conference not that many years ago, one of the netsmen likened the treatment that river boards (and the rods) had meted out to the nets, in buying them out and seeking to reduce their fishing hours, to the way the Nazis had persecuted the Jews.

It was, of course, an outrageous and despicable thing to say and on reflection, no doubt, he regretted saying it, but it demonstrates the depth of anger and frustration. Their case is that river boards have a duty to act in the interests of all the fisheries, both nets and rods, but, in fact, the boards have acted only for the rods, many boards having bought out netting rights and in every way sought to reduce the number of fish the nets catch and kill.

The nets believe the boards’ conservation arguments are convenient, playing up the lack of fish to justify their actions in reducing netting, but in reality allowing more fish upriver so that the lairds can catch more, and line their already bulging pockets.

Not one that most of those reading this will agree with, but it is a point of view.

At the heart of it is that rods can (and increasingly do, 75% of all fish caught now being returned) still fish without killing their salmon, by catch and release. The nets cannot operate without killing what they catch; in times of salmon scarcity where conservation of stocks is key, that is a fatal, in every sense, weakness in the netting case.

So where does the Scottish Government stand in all this?

If you are cynical, you might be tempted to think that the SNP Government does not see many votes in being nice to the rod lobby, the great majority of owners of Scottish rod fishing rights being if not anglophile, most certainly staunchly and irrevocably unionist.

Was the £100,000 reportedly given via Europe to Usan Fisheries, netter in chief, a sign of the way the Scottish Government wind is blowing? Will it be minded, in the nicest possible way, to indulge in some rod bashing (bring back sporting rates?) rather than do what many argue it should do (further restrict/remove all interceptory netting off the coast)? Will it add salmon fisheries to the Land Reform agenda in seeking to widen ownership? Or even try to seize control of Scottish salmon river management using the EA model in England of neo state control, even if that model, to judge by results, is largely discredited?

All this is most probably alarmist, and much might depend on the outcome of the Independence Referendum in September; all bets, some say, are off and Andrew Thin’s current review of Scottish salmon fisheries could go either way.

It would be odd, would it not, if Tweed, which is unarguably the best financed, by a street the most prolific, the generally accepted best and most representatively managed Atlantic salmon river in the UK, if not the North Atlantic, comes under adverse scrutiny from politicians and their appointed representatives.

What, we should argue, they should do is look at us as a model to be copied and applied elsewhere in Scotland.

It might all depend on whether they look at what Tweed has achieved over the past 30 years, the massive investment in money and resources and the concomitant success, as opposed to who owns it.

For the lazy minded, the easy stereotypes of old, the poor downtrodden netsman and the rich rod fisher, are still as firmly fixed as they were 80 years ago for Henry Williamson.

One would imagine that the owners of Usan Fisheries are a lot richer than the great mass of individual recreational salmon rod fishermen, but will the politicians see that and the vast difference in respective contributions, of netting and rod fishing, to rural employment and the wider Scottish economy?

After a successful yes vote for Scotland in September, Tweed could no longer be run, once Scotland obtains legal independence in 2016, as it is now with its own legislation under the Scotland Act. If it remains as a unit for management purposes (as opposed to England running the English bits and Scotland the Scottish bits), there would have to be treaty negotiations between Scotland and the rest of the UK with respect to Tweed.

It is all very unsettling; by 2017 the English bit of Tweed could be out of the EEC, the Scottish bit could be in the EEC but out of the UK, and Tweed could be managed under a Scotland/UK treaty.

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By way of postscript, it seems that Usan have now withdrawn their application to cull seals in the Ythan estuary, and they no longer intend to restart netting there either (or at least not this side of the Referendum, so much have Usan annoyed our First Minister’s constituents in Aberdeenshire).

Charles Clover has written an excellent article in today’s Sunday Times (compulsory reading) on the whole subject of Mr Salmond, his love of nets because he has no time for the toffs who own salmon fishing, and how this has now rebounded on him because the 1,100 members of the Ythan Angling Association put back 90 % of the fish they catch, and abhor netting (and Usan) as much as those unspeakable riparian owning toffs hate netting. If there is one thing that unites anglers, way beyond political affiliation and social background, it is a visceral detestation of interceptory netting.

Does one smell the whiff of political pressure from on high behind Usan’s decision, and will that pressure come off as soon as the Referendum is over?

You bet.

Stranger still, Usan have also, somewhat gratuitously, said they have no plans to acquire any more netting rights in Scotland. More cynical political pressure on Usan designed to reassure anglers and their votes?

All of which is on the face of it very good news……..for our salmon. Or is it?

You will excuse me if it all smells distinctly fishy, a convenient (and, sadly, temporary) change of heart, all done to appease the angling lobby in the run up to the Referendum.

There would appear to be more politics in salmon fishing now than there ever was 80 years ago when Salar and that glutinous old hag Myxine were putting it about in Two Rivers.