16 October 2016
You forget, we all do, if you are lucky enough to live a long life.
Most would say there has been just one change in our Tweed salmon in living memory, the late 1960s collapse in the spring run (amplified by UDN in 1967) and the concomitant rise in autumn salmon after that.
They would be wrong, there have been two changes…..and most current observers would say we are in the process of a third.
The second, which most failed to notice, was in the late 1980s/ 1990s/2000s with a gradual but definite move away from autumn salmon towards autumn grilse.
Nothing could be more stark than some of the photographs in my Smythsons of Bond Street (who else?) Fishing Book.
I have one photograph of the current Chairman of the Association of Salmon Fishery Boards, a very fine fisherman, with 10 salmon, yours truly at the oars, caught in the Temple Pool on 9th October 1982, the average weight was 14lbs. The two smallest were 7lbs, not a skinny 3lb grilse in sight, the other 8 were all over 10lbs, most over 15lbs.
The second photograph, just 2 weeks later, is of said Chairman’s brother-in-law, an artist of considerable repute and also a fine fisherman, with 7 salmon, 4 caught in the Temple Pool and 3 in the Cauld Stream on 22nd October 1982, averaging 16lbs. The smallest was 10lbs and the biggest 20lbs.
These were, in retrospect, the heady days of big autumn salmon, almost no autumn grilse.
From the weights in my Fishing Book, there is no distinct point at which grilse predominated, just that slowly but surely between the late 1980s and the 2000s, the average weight of autumn fish came down from the 12-14lb range of the 1970s and 1980s, to somewhere between 7- 8lbs in the 2000s and early 2010s.
For instance, on 29th September 2007 I caught 10 salmon (or rather grilse) here on a floating line, mostly sea liced, and they weighed in total 62 lbs, an average of 6lbs. An extreme example, no doubt, but you cannot imagine anything like that happening 25 years earlier, in 1982.
There had been a revolution, but because large numbers of fish still came in, nobody really complained because large numbers were still being caught at the traditional “Tweed” time of year, in the autumn. That the average weight plummeted from over 12lbs to around 71/2 lbs was noticed, as was the by then 75% preponderance of grilse over salmon, but it wasn’t given that much attention because, hey, there are still lots of fish to be caught, October is the best month, ok they are smaller, but we had record catches year after year culminating in 2010…... what’s to worry about?
It all went pretty much unnoticed, in stark contrast to what is happening now.
The great WL Calderwood in his bible on “Salmon and Sea Trout” written in 1930, just after the last switch from autumn salmon and grilse, said of the Tweed:
“ I recollect being told most emphatically about five and twenty years ago (1905) that Tweed had always been a late river and always would be a late river; that it did not hold spring fish naturally. I ventured to reply that I saw no reason why Tweed should not be a spring river…...the river holds good spring runs now (1930) and has done so for several years.”
So it was that pre 1910 Tweed anglers were pretty much where we were in 2013; after 50 years of consistently big autumn runs, we could not imagine anything else…...nor could they in 1905, and correspondence and newspaper comments at the time made it clear that they bemoaned the lack of autumn salmon and grilse, whilst barely noticing the subsequent increase in spring salmon between 1910 and 1925.
Post 1925 they were in full bore spring mode, with 1000s of spring fish keeping both the multitude of nets, and the rods on the net-free beats above Coldstream, happy.
No doubt they continued to regret the loss of the autumn fish, but that was more than compensated by vast numbers of springers, which were not only available to be caught as fresh fish in the spring and early summer months, but also as more coloured specimens later in the year….rather as more coloured fish are being caught now in October 2016.
It could be a good thing…...in time.
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So if we are in transition, as the last 3 years would seem to indicate, how long will the transition take? And will the salmon come back in the spring (as in 1925 to 1966) or in the summer, as in when one of my ancestors caught 82 fresh salmon in a week in June 1795, and 2 monsters 40lbs and 45 lbs, sea liced, in July the same year?
Who knows, and there is no sign whatever of any significant increase in early spring fish yet.
But with no netting to speak of in either spring or summer now, the vast majority of fish will get in as compared to the 1925 to 1966 era, when offshore, coastal and in-river netting reached its peak, killing 100s of 1,000s of fish.
For the time being, the most fish on the Tweed may still be caught, as now, in August, September and October, maybe even early November, but the quality will be less good than in my 1982 photographs, as the fish come in earlier in the late spring and/or summer.
Is this a prediction?
Only fools make salmon-related predictions , but from looking at 2014, 2015 and 2016……there is a distinct trend.
And we are not alone, going by the reports from other east coast Scottish rivers of lack of fresh fish coming in from mid-July 2016 onwards. It could well be happening there too, which is what you would expect if it is happening here.
Many blame sea smolt mortality, in-river predation by avian and fishy predators, global warming, melting sea ice, seals and dolphins, factory ships at sea scooping up entire runs of salmon etc etc…..all of which, to a greater or lesser extent, play a part.
On the other hand, most of it could just be the natural cycle of salmon runs, which have always changed over the centuries and will, no doubt, continue to do so.
It is the conceit of every generation that their problems are new.
Others may think that whatever is happening is not new, that it is the forces of nature at work, and that there is nothing we can do to change it.
Exactly as 100 years ago.
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