16 March 2014 News/Editorial
I am indebted to Dr Ronald Campbell for further researches on the 1 and 2lb grilse issue.
He has sent me a newspaper article from July 1978 referring to the existence then of “miniature salmon” of 1 to 2lbs, mainly in the early summer grilse runs of northern rivers, and that article refers back to the start of the 20th century and the great work on Tay salmon runs by Malloch, in which he also refers to these tiny grilse.
They are clearly nothing new Scotland-wide, if not obviously on Tweed which gets no mention in that article or in a further much longer, earlier 1958 paper by Shearer on the same subject. None of this quite answers either (a) the sheer numbers caught here last autumn (the previous papers suggest that although they existed in the past, they were very very few in number) or (b) the timing ie why did they come so late (most in October and November) when Shearer and Malloch suggest they are the (small) precursor of the main grilse run?
There is some comfort that in terms of incidence, if maybe not the scale and timing, it has happened before on other rivers.
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The fishing last week was patchy, as expected below Kelso very little with all the action(in some cases, eg Junction and Floors, quite considerable) from there up to Melrose. Springers tend to go straight through the lower beats until they find some mates.
I recall a netsman many years ago telling me that springers are different to summer and early autumn fish; the latter tend to take their time, hang around in tidal waters and come in and out on the tide, much easier for the nets to catch. The springer by contrast comes in like a bullet, head down and does not stop, the nets get one crack at them or they are gone, and they don’t stop until some friendly faces and wagging tails hove into view.
Not unlike humans.
On the way upriver by car from Berwick, you have a quick look in at the Salutation, then the bars at Tillmouth Park Hotel and the Collingwood Arms, but there are not many people there and a bit gloomy because they have caught nothing, so you go on up to the Ednam House in Kelso where there are loads of jolly people having a good time, banging on about fishing, all very congenial, so naturally you stop off for a pint (or three) of the landlord’s best, and suddenly you have to stay the night.
So it is with the springer at this time of year.
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“This is as good as it gets” said the man on the bench with a noticeably impressive camera and protruding lens in his hands, a very blonde girlfriend by his side.
You do not need to be Sherlock to spot a girlfriend; no self respecting wife that I know would have been out there with her man at 7.30am.
“I agree” said I “if only it was a little bit warmer.” I was walking my dogs.
The time was 7.45am 11th March, the place a bench overlooking the Tweed, the weather breathtakingly glorious, not a cloud in the sky and the spring sunshine pouring up river, everything sparkling and glistening. There was not a breath of wind.
The view across into England and the Cheviots was crystal clear and bright; there were swans, both whooper and mute, paired up mallard and otters fishing midstream. The daffodils and primroses were out, God was in his heaven and all was right with the world.
And then I found myself saying these extraordinary words “Have you seen the egrets?”
“Indeed” said the birder “we have seen two”.
Extraordinary words because I never thought I would say them, or at least not in Scotland. Now I see from my book (The Birds of Scotland in two volumes given to me by an over generous brother) that the little egret, which our two most decidedly are, was first seen in Scotland in 1954 and then a few thereafter until 1986, when ”it became an annual visitor”.
I first saw them on my gap year in 1969 in Spain and France, then they crept into the south of England (north Norfolk is stiff with them)… and now they are here.
It isn’t that I do not like them, it just does not seem right, egrets on the Tweed. Had you told anyone here in the 1980s that, as soon as 2014, you would be casting your blue charm into the spring waters of Tweed with a backdrop of egrets sunning themselves on the bank, they would have thought you were mad.
My instinctive rejoinder to my birder friend’s “this is as good as it gets” should have been “when do you think the storks will get here?”
They nest on chimneys, chattering away to the accompaniment of the call to prayer emanating from minarets in Morocco.
Now there’s a thought; maybe we will have them here too by 2050?
What fun it would be, beavers (which by then will be legion), egrets and storks, all at the same time.
I can’t wait.
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