news/editorial

16 October 2022 News/Editorial

After another good week’s fishing (maybe 600 caught), with salmon still evident in surprising numbers at Coldstream and below, given recent rises in water, but with beats above Galashiels providing a marked increase in catches, it is the middle Tweed beats that have missed out (exceptionally Upper Dryburgh with 12 on Wednesday) as salmon have pushed westwards at some speed.

With another unsettled week to come (river up to 4ft today and more rain on Thursday), it could be a question of “catch them when you can” as water levels settle, briefly, before the next depression hits.

If you had said 6 weeks ago, at the end of August, that the Tweed catch score for 2022 could exceed that of 2021 and 2018, the other recent drought years, few would have believed you. The next bit (below) reflects on where that leaves us in terms of recent years results since the autumn decline of 2014.

A reasonable conclusion is surprisingly comforting in these uncertain times.

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There is a conceit abroad that when financial crises appear, as those of us of a certain age know they will, say every 10 to 15 years, that this crisis is bigger and worse than not only the last, but of every crisis before. If, like me, you started working in London in the early 1970s, you will know that this is gigantically untrue. Thankfully the 1972-1974 meltdown has never quite been repeated since, not even in the 2008 banking crisis.

Reflection when things are bad is a good thing, if only to remind ourselves they are not/may not be that bad after all.

Let us guess that the Tweed salmon catch score for 2022 ends up at around 6,000, not unlike last year, both lower than the 5 year average of just under 7,000.

Two factors, above all else, dictate salmon catches, being, first, the numbers of fish and, secondly, fishing conditions, the worst by far of the latter being drought and heat. It is no coincidence that in three of the last five years (2018, 2021 and 2022) there have been summer droughts and, to a greater or lesser extent, heat. These three years have/will have (assuming what I say about 2022 proves to be correct) recorded catch scores lower than any others since the autumn run collapse of 2014, indeed lower than any since the late 1970s. It is hard not to conclude that these dry and hot summers are having a damaging effect on salmon rod catches.

Although it is certainly true that many of the fish you do not catch by rod and line in the summer, because of adverse or near impossible angling conditions, will be caught later on in September and October (and 2022 is proving that beyond any doubt, as less than 1% of what is being caught now is remotely silver), it is surely true that fewer will be caught than eg in 2020 when there was water aplenty (once lockdown had ended) right through the summer, and not too hot. The other major factor, unknown as to the quantity of its effect, is that while salmon mill around off the coast, unable/unwilling to enter the river for lack of water, many of them are eaten by seals and dolphins. The only study of which I am aware, in the south of England, put the loss rate in a prolonged drought at anything up to 50%, as compared to when salmon have plenty of water, and simply swim straight into the river without pause. As a bigger river, ergo easier to enter if you are a salmon, a loss rate of 50% for the Tweed might be very much on the high side, but even 10%-20% loss would have a significant effect on rod catches.

Accordingly, absent the drought and heat effects of those three years, it would be not unreasonable to say that all recent years (with exception of 2020, when by common consent there just were more fish) have shown remarkable consistency at around the 6,000 to 7,000 level rod catch.

Such numbers may be a shadow of 2010, when an astonishing 23,219 (the 5 year average then was around 16,000) were caught by the rods, or even 2013, the last good autumn year pre collapse, with 14,794, but what they do seem to be doing is establishing some sort of secure consistent baseline.

We all know that salmon run timings are cyclical as to season, what we do not know is to what extent they are cyclical as to numbers (eg a grilse cycle tends to be more numerous than a salmon one, because more salmon die by spending another year in the sea). Whereas in the big autumn years pre 2014, 75% of what we caught here were grilse, now in 2022 over 75% of what we are catching are salmon. For example, on Thursday we caught 9 here, one was a grilse of 4lbs and other weights were 20,15,14,14, 13,12,11,10lbs.

Amongst all the grumbles that “things are not what they were”, it is worth reflecting that they could be a lot worse, and that the current consistency of results gives some comfort that the one-off, dramatic decline of 2014 has stabilised at a consistent level over the past 9 years, and has not noticeably declined further.

Moreover, in terms of breeding muscle, there may be fewer of them, but salmon of the weights shown in the pre penultimate paragraph above, averaging nearly 14lbs, pack a lot more spawning punch than the same number, even twice the number, of grilse averaging 4 or 5 lbs.

There are some positives in these comparatively lean “catch numbers” times. Going further back than the financial crash of 1972-74, Tweed had its own similar disaster in March/April 1967 (the spring run was the main event then) with UDN and when every fish in the river seemed to be dying.

It may not be much comfort to Tweed fishers, but, at times, things have been a lot worse/gloomier in the past.

Whether the current Prime Minister can take any comfort from that thought in this turbulent financial world, one rather doubts. .