news/editorial

18 July 2021 News/Editorial

There is nothing good about the weather forecast for next week, for salmon fishers at least. Hot and sunny, wIth consequent ever lower and hotter water, is the prognosis. Some say we should not even be fishing for animal welfare reasons. I am not sure it will make much difference, because remarkably few salmon are likely to be caught; any that are caught, and hopefully returned, should be treated with kid gloves, not taken out of the water at all, even to unhook, certainly not photographed.

There are dark warnings of a dramatic thundery breakdown, and something much cooler, setting in from next weekend. The equation could not be simpler. Without rain, and lots of it, the fishing will not improve. How many salmon appear when we get water is another matter, but first we need a proper “clean out” flood.

I would be surprised if the July salmon catch for 2021 gets as high as 200. The turnaround since the 1,836 July 2020 record catch is truly extraordinary, almost impossible to process/believe. Some will be tempted to blame the weather, conveniently forgetting that the fish numbers are not there.

Yet.

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Corporal Jones’ “Don’t panic, don’t paniiiiic!” springs to mind as we survey the catches on the Tweed last week. Good advice, but here in mid-July with the lower beats still seeing very little activity, it takes a resolute mind not to be concerned.

In the days of our fabled autumn runs, we could relax, knowing that by far the best was yet to come, from August onwards.

The only comfort is that the timing of our salmon runs has been both unpredictable, and unpredicted by everyone, in recent times. Did anyone predict the autumn collapse of 2014, immediately after the second biggest November catch (in 2013) this river has ever seen?

How is it possible that the autumn collapses of 2014 and 2015 were just exactly when the MSW offspring of the massive run of 2010, when the rods caught an unimaginable 23,219 salmon, should have been coming back? And did anyone really predict the sudden increase in late spring and summer fish last year, in 2020? And if they say they did, did any of them announce in advance that this year 2021, would be nothing like 2020, with so few late spring and early summer fish?

I have not heard anyone convincingly and logically explain so many seemingly random and dramatic swings.

As for this year, we need some salmon to appear, and fast. But even with more water, will they?

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Mid July, the dog days of summer, is just when the gloss goes off the growth and glory of spring. The greens are less green, the grassses are falling over and going brownish, the wild flowers are bowing over and losing their colour, the leaves are darker, less fresh. My roses, both eaten by roe deer (we have four regulars) and battered by some torrential showers, are ok, but the best is behind us.

In the old days, when things were orderly, you knew that the grilse would soon arrive, and then gather momentum until the post 15th September crescendo of salmon and grilse. Like you, I now have no idea what will happen next. We thought that 2020 marked a new beginning, the start of some new order and certainties. We were wrong, or at the very least, if not completely wrong, 2020 is certainly a blip in the smooth passage to spring and summer fishing which the pundits told us was the future.

We have just returned from the lovely and dramatic River Findhorn. I had three grilse at my fly over the 2 days fishing, but all three failed to take proper hold, typical grilse. I fondly imagine that 20 years ago, we would have seen more fish in those lovely Coulmony pools, but perhaps that just reflects my overall concern/worry, about apparently ever-declining salmon numbers everywhere, shining through?

Retaining some optimism about it all is not easy.