16 September 2018 News/Editorial
The Tweed rod catch for last week was 353 salmon and 39 sea trout, making the cumulative totals (within 90% accuracy) 2,715 salmon and 470 sea trout to 15th September 2018.
It was, quite easily, the best week of the year so far.
That this September has been far more productive than 2017 is self evident, with many more grilse and even some more fresh salmon.
It has been the lowest beats, especially those below Coldstream, that have benefited most from the prolonged low water levels, but with recent small rises, good catches have spread as far upstream as Boleside.
General water levels since the beginning of May, with the odd short-lived blip for those annoying dirty summer rises of a foot or two, have been at or around summer level for over 4 months. This, in turn, means that the fishable water in all beats has been reduced by more than half from what it would be at perfect fishing height.
It has been very frustrating, bordering on desperate, for all but a very few lucky fishermen.
If that were not bad enough, we could be about to enter another phase when even less than half the pools are fishable, this time because of the opposite….flooding.
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As storm Helene rushes towards us (the first autumn storm of 2018, with a few more to follow maybe) on Monday night and Tuesday morning, bringing tropical air with it, it will be surprising if we avoid its tropical moisture as well.
Despite what you would think, any sort of wet autumn will mean 2018 being far from a very dry year.
At almost 17 inches to the end of August 2018, with 4 months to go, the following are the properly dry years over the last 114 years since 1904, in the Coldstream area (I am indebted to the Aitchison family at Lochton for this information):
1972 16.21 inches
1989 16.44 “
1942 17.04 “
1964 18.47 “
With 1976 coming in at 20.71 inches, not even in the top ten, with the same fate most probably awaiting 2018.
So much for what we all believe to be true, and will no doubt argue to the death it is true (eg re 1976) ....
…….even when it isn’t.
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I have news for lovers of our pisciverous birds.
They are back.
After an almost total absence of cormorants over the summer, and a much reduced goosander population, I counted 40 goosanders and 5 cormorants on my dog-walk this morning.
They will be with us in numbers, eating our fish, from now until April next year, before the nesting instinct takes many/most of them away.
What damage will they do over those 6 or 7 months?
Only when we (and other rivers) can precisely quantify that damage, from stomach content analysis, will we be able to persuade licencing authorities and Government to allow us to do much more to protect our fish.
As has already been promoted many times in these pages, the solution that all anglers would accept is that from (say) October to March, both cormorants and goosanders can be shot within the river corridor (defined as 50 metres either side of the Tweed main stem or of any tributary), but are fully protected, as now, elsewhere.
Only then will we all feel that something meaningful is being done to protect and preserve our young fish.
Students of our legislation will know that under Article 9 (b) The Scotland Act 1998 (River Tweed) Order 2006 “Functions of the (Tweed) Commission”:
“The Commission may do such acts, execute such works and incur such expenses as may appear to it expedient for the preservation and increase of salmon and freshwater fish in the district”.
There is clear conflict here between what our own Act says the Tweed Commission can do (the only hurdle to be crossed is that it “may appear to it to be expedient”) and what the authorities (in the form of the provisions of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981) allow us to do with respect to those birds which eat our fish.
In effect, the Tweed Commission is being prevented from fully doing what is one of its main functions (“the preservation and increase of salmon”) under its own legislation.
As the numbers of these birds, especially cormorants, increase, it is high time that the Tweed Commission is allowed to fully perform its statutory functions by those (SNH and Government?) stopping it from doing so.....
... because they restrict our capacity to preserve our young salmon by not allowing us to keep our fish-eating bird numbers under control.
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