news/editorial

17 August 2014 News/Editorial

Chaos theory is alive and well in intense low pressure systems.

Somehow Bertha got past us with no more than a glancing blow last week, yet deluged and sank both Speyside and the Findhorn valley.

Then just when she seemed to have gone altogether, her tail contained an unforecast thunderstorm which sat for 2 or 3 hours somewhere between Lauder and Hawick on Thursday afternoon, resulting in water on Friday as browny red as the very best mulligatawny soup.

The colour all week gave an excuse for those rampant Flying C types to use little or nothing else, whereas of the 25 caught here only, 22 were caught on a fly, and the other 3 spinning in high water by comparative beginners.

Given some dry days in the coming week, and as the colour goes and the river heights decline, will the Flying Cs disappear to be replaced, as they should be, by fly fishing only?

I fear not.

I am not alone in thinking there is some connection between those who come to spin on Tweed, and only spin, at this time of year and those same people who like to kill a lot of fish.

Proprietors can stop it, as we have here and as I know many other beats have, but it is up to individual proprietors, and sadly not all of them seem willing to take a stand.

In a month’s time it will be fly only by law.

I can’t wait.

ooooOoooo

That it has been a bad spring and summer for our salmon Scotland-wide can hardly be disputed, but there have been very bad springs and dry summers before.

So why the Salmon & Trout Association’s very public statement last week aimed at reducing exploitation (i.e. killing) salmon?

Well, it has indeed been bad, but more relevantly there is also some evidence that the coastal nets do especially well in the summer, when river levels are low, simply because the salmon in the sea either will not or cannot enter the comparative safety of the rivers, and swim about off the coast, for an extended period, waiting for the rivers to flood, to provide them with easy access.

In so doing they are easy pickings for the coastal nets, who, in the equally dry summer last year (2013), increased their catch by 50% on the previous year (2012).

The danger of requests/public statements, such as as this, from S&TA, effectively calling for some curtailment of netting or quota on their catches, however much it may or may not be justified in pure conservation terms, is that it can be seen as wholly self serving by the rods lobby (which S&TA is), effectively seeking to reduce netting simply so that rod proprietors and anglers can catch more.

The only defence that I can see, if you agree with what S&TA are saying, is that the rods also will have to commit themselves en masse to not killing any more salmon in 2014, because surely simple “restraint” in killing what you catch, however you interpret that, will be seen as weasel words designed to leave wriggle room for rods while calling for netters to kill no more.

Nobody likes hypocrites, except maybe those who cannot either recognise them or are themselves hypocritical, but if you agree with S&TA, then you should ask yourself on what logical basis you can justify killing any salmon you catch here or anywhere else in Scotland for the rest of this year 2014?

Do I agree with S&TA?

I agree that the interceptory coastal nets are both indiscriminate in what salmon they catch (ie they have no means of knowing whether they are catching Dee, Spey, Naver or Tweed etc fish) and that in a dry year they probably catch more than the stock of salmon in many rivers would sensibly allow.

But, and it is a very big BUT, these nets have heritable rights, they have an absolute right to do what they are doing, so long as they operate within the law, and to try to reduce their legal activities in the way that S&TA seem to propose, has the smell of something not quite right…..short, one hopes, of outright hypocrisy.

If the rod lobby want to get rid of interceptory nets, then they should seek to buy them out at fair compensation values, and maybe the Government could assist in that process, if, of course, when confronted by the impartial evidence, interceptory netting is agreed, as it should be, to be fundamentally wrong.

Until then, and if you agree with what S&TA have said last week, try asking yourself how you can justify killing any salmon that you catch, when you presumably agree that the nets should not?

One rule for them (the nets), and quite another rule for us (the rods), is surely the very hallmark of hypocrisy?

I have an argument which may, for some, get you out of this hypocritical dilemma.

But I am not going to tell you what it is…….and, what’s more, the nets will find it wholly unconvincing.