14 October 2018 News/Editorial
The Tweed rod catch last week was 153 salmon and 20 sea trout, making the cumulative scores to date 3,989 salmon and 599 sea trout (within 90% accuracy).
In a suspiciously warm, windy and ultimately very wet week, those fishing were unlucky with conditions and that showed up in the catches.
Quite what the fish thought of it, is anyone’s guess as the water temperature went from 46F last weekend to 57F by Wednesday afternoon , with the air temperature by then over 70F.
For those of us who do not like such high temperatures when you are trying to catch autumn fish, it was the exact opposite of the much more welcome cooler, even frosty, weather forecast for the week ahead.
If we get that, and no more significant rain, as the current 6ft flood, the biggest since April, subsides...then fishing conditions should become good.
But only if the numbers of fish are there.
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If you want to feel both sick, and extremely angry, try watching this....
and then Andrew Graham Stewart’s excellent commentary on the offending fish farm’s unconvincing defence here https://www.salmon-trout.org/2018/09/19/loch-roag-sea-lice/?mc_cid=a15bfc9c36&mc_eid=c5e32174a9
How these fish farms continue to get away with it is extraordinary. You would think it is at least partly because Government is turning a blind eye viz money, exports and jobs are worth the price of trashing the environment and our wild salmon and sea trout on the Scottish west coast in particular.
It has been going on for years and we should all congratulate and support S&TC in getting to grips with it all, and in bringing these appalling fish farms practices to book.
Can you imagine the outcry if (say) a sheep farmer had to routinely bury thousands of lambs/sheep every year because they get disease and die? Yet this is exactly what is happening in fish farming.
One can only assume that it is because they are fish, rather than cuddly lambs, that are dying , that the great British public just does not care...and they and Government continue to allow these horrific practices to continue and the perpetrators to get away with it.
One can only guess at what this is all doing to our wild fish, not just off the Scottish west coast where it has clearly had a devastating effect over many decades on their rivers and lochs, but also in the north atlantic where all our fish go to feed.
Whatever else, it cannot possibly be good.
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