13 March 2022 News/Editorial
Another week goes by with less than perfect fishing conditions for long suffering anglers and boatmen to endure. Just as levels reduce to something approaching a good fishing height, along comes another rain band to lift them again.
Guesswork is all we can employ for catch numbers, but yet again it might have been around 60-70 for the week, with Junction (I am told) catching 9 one day, and one or two being caught below Coldstream, some also on the Whiteadder. There has even been the odd seal getting to Coldstream.
Whilst the catch numbers are undeniably good news, given the river's ups and downs, there is something of a phoney war about it, until such time as the weather decides to settle, and the river levels with it, for more than a few days. Current forecasts for next week predict more of the same until after Wednesday, when that elusive blocking high pressure may at last move in, and hang around.
Those annoying cormorants are still here, if not in the same 60+ flocks of yore. The quicker they all push off to the coast, and leave our river and its young fish alone, the better.
--00--
There was a bit of a stushi at the RTC’s quarterly meeting last Monday. What goes on there is, of course, private, but it all ended, as these things must, well enough for the good of the river.
At the preceding AGM, Peter Straker-Smith was elected as Chief Commissioner and we all wish him good fortune in what is never an easy task. To take on something that is so time consuming and onerous, on behalf of all those concerned for the Tweed, is a considerable self sacrifice. After 30+ years on the Tweed Committee, few both have a better knowledge of the recent history of Tweed management and are, consequently, better qualified.
--00--
Those all important catch numbers for 2021 were made available at the RTC’s AGM.
The rod and net catches were 5,862 and 581 salmon respectively. The rod catch was the second worst (2018 was the worst) since 1980, when netting was rife both in the river and in the seas. There is just one part time net now in the harbour, nothing in the river and nothing at sea.
Much is made of the poor summer rod fishing conditions, but the river was consistently lower in 2003 when nearly 15,000 were caught by the rods. And the net catch of 581 in the whole 2021 season compares to a single net (Hallowstell on the beach) catch in one day in the 1990s of over 750.
There are those who still maintain that everything is fine, that all those talking of an “existential crisis” for the Atlantic salmon are wrong, and that nothing needs to be done. The problem with that is that it is a one way bet; such optimism could be right, but when that translates into not doing what can still be done to improve things, to try to both produce more and further protect our young fish, then that is where some of us part company with the “everything is alrighters”.
Where we can all agree is in wishing salmon numbers in 2022 to be more like 2020 than 2021.
our twitter feed