18 April 2021 News/Editorial
“You have to make people care” so said Sandy Bremner, ex BBC and now Chairman of the River Dee Trust at a presentation to the FMS annual conference. Not only do they have to care, but the Scottish people have to think of salmon as “our salmon”, part of our national heritage, something that belongs to all of us, part of who we are.
Politicians react to public mood, so the public mood must recognise that our Atlantic salmon are under threat, in deep crisis, from numerous sources, as never before. If people can be persuaded of that, if politicians have the public hammering on their doors for action, then, and only then, will it happen.
Which brings me back to killing salmon. How can you look the Scottish public in the face, and the politicians, appealing for help because the salmon is at crisis point, when we anglers here on the Tweed habitually kill 750 to 1,100 salmon every year?
I have visions of my old friend, aka the Grand Inquisitor, erstwhile scourge of those brave enough to appear on Newsnight, giving me the death stare and asking, with ill disguised venom;
“Tell me, Mr Douglas-Home, you say the salmon is in crisis, that numbers returning to Scotland are at an all time low, that you desperately need help from both the private sector and from Government to sort out the many issues surrounding salmon survival. Is that correct?”
“Er, yes Jeremy (good tactic, call him by his Christian name, in order to ingratiate) that is exactly what I'm saying”.
“Then please tell me Mr Douglas-Home (oops, ingratiation failure) why the salmon anglers on the Tweed, of which I understand you are one, and an owner to boot, no doubt carrying some influence, regularly kill up to 1,100 salmon unnecessarily every year? Why do your fellow anglers and owners allow this to happen while at the same time telling the Government that the salmon is nearing crisis point, fighting for its very survival? How do you think the public will view the Tweed, how can you expect the public to care about your salmon, when you are party to a regular slaughter of the very species you claim is under existential threat?”
“Er, well thank you Jeremy, you understand of course that I personally have not deliberately killed any salmon I have caught for 15 years now. And calling it “slaughter” is a bit strong!”
“Really, have you ever seen over 1,000 dead salmon? Just because there are so many of you killing them over a number of days/weeks doesn’t mean that the sight of over 1,000 dead salmon would not be shocking. To many, “slaughter” will seem exactly the right word. If the Scottish salmon really is under existential threat, would it not be a good idea for the Tweed to lead by example, as opposed to saying “I’m alright Jack” just because you have a few more fish than other rivers? Am I right in thinking that, even on the Tweed, migrating salmon numbers are low in historical terms, in which case why does the Tweed go on killing so many of those diminished numbers that get back there? You and your fellow Tweed anglers and owners are the ultimate hypocrites, are you not? You cry wolf about how endangered salmon are, you take off the nets because they kill too many salmon, and now you are by far the biggest killers of Atlantic salmon in the UK. How can you possibly justify that when you are trying to convince the Scottish public that their salmon are in terminal decline?”
“Er, those are very good points, Jeremy. Thank you for interviewing me. Can I go now?”
The message has to be simple. Granted, we kill nothing in the spring and no hens after 1st September, but that matters nought if you want others to care for our cause. You try asking the public to “care for our salmon” when you have to admit that we killed 1,050 of our own last year.
It won’t work. We are letting the side down; other rivers get it. We still don’t.
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Now, some of you reading that will think it all goes way too far. I know better than you that there were loads of salmon in the Tweed last summer, and that taking a harvest, a small harvest in percentage terms, is unlikely to adversely affect either spawning coverage, or egg deposition, to the extent that fewer than the optimum number of fry are produced. I make one exception to that, which is that when you kill a salmon, you do so in total ignorance of where it is going. Is it going to the Gala, positively overloaded with adult spawners, or is it going to some far flung corner of this massive catchment which few others will reach, and where it is needed?
But beyond all that is my overall belief that we humans have been responsible for the retreat of the Atlantic salmon to the northernmost corners of its range. And don’t blame just global warming, though that is part of it. We have ruined once prolific salmon rivers in Portugal, Spain, France and right around the North Sea’s southern rim. When I see the beautiful clear waters of the upper Dordogne, it should be teeming with salmon, as should the Loire, the Seine, the Rhine and so on. The Thames is our own worst example of destruction, although there are many more around our own shores that have been canalised, polluted to death and cut off by dams and impassable weirs. The Wye would seem to be the latest casualty, if not terminal, certainly in intensive care.
The point I make is that we here on the Tweed are on the front line. With the exception of some Irish rivers, we are the most southerly of the great salmon rivers, and if you were to plot the salmon rivers that were once teeming, but are now either defunct or struggling bigtime, they are all south of us. The invasion of destruction has spread like a slow but unstoppable tidal wave from the west coast of Portugal, around Northern Spain, right up the coast of Western France, into the Channel and beyond, almost until you get to Norway. That wave would also touch large parts of the UK and Ireland, now including those blighted by fish farms. That the Atlantic salmon is in retreat is a given. It has happened incrementally, over centuries, so that no one generation ever took control and said “This far and no further”. Look at the Scottish west coast rivers, not so long ago the River Lochy and Loch Maree, to name but two of many such, were amongst the most famous of our fisheries, everyone had heard of them, we all wanted to fish there. Not now. They have been all but destroyed by fish farms, yet another creeping incremental point of destruction for which this generation is guilty, just as those before us have been responsible for ruination and dereliction caused by industrialisation, overfishing, pollution, dam building, you name it.
The salmon is a bellwether of our environment and of everywhere it travels between its home river, where it is born, and West Greenland. We here must make a stand, our behaviour must be beyond reproach, the creeping destruction has to end now, no compromises. Killing over 1,000 of our precious survivors on the Tweed just doesn’t cut it, what message does it send, that everything is ok, just as our forefathers thought? It is not ok, they got it wrong and we are still getting it wrong.
Next time you are lucky enough to catch a salmon, when you take the hook out, take a brief moment to look it in the eye, fellow creature to fellow creature. In that moment, understand both what an honour and privilege it is to have caught it at all, and what a massive, epic adventure it has been on. Its journey’s sole purpose is to spawn and keep the species going. Why would you deny it that? Break the mould, you have no right whatever to kill it. Send it back on its way, to complete the journey. After all, where you catch it is the last leg, it is so nearly there.
There is one book you must read, in case you think I exaggerate, it is “Salmon” by Mark Kurlansky (Amazon, other booksellers are available, will oblige). Once you have read it, you might even begin to think like me.
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What of fishing prospects? There were a few more fish last week, despite ever lower water levels and cloudless, sunny skies. Colder maybe, but it is so reminiscent of the first lockdown, when April and May 2020 here had more sunshine hours than the Algarve, and it hardly rained. The forecasting consensus for the next few weeks, well into May, is for more of the same.
What that does to the fishing is anyone’s guess, and springers can run on almost any water (or lack of it), but the odds are moving heavily in favour of the lower and lowest beats for success.
Just like last year.
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