news/editorial

18 March 2018 News/Editorial

9 salmon and 6 sea trout were caught last week, making 77 salmon and 16 sea trout for the year to date.

As most of a third week’s fishing is lost to the weather, the first to extreme cold and the following two to flooding, a poor February catch could now be followed by an equally poor March. We will soon be able to tell, as things quieten down a little at the start of the coming week.

You could be forgiven for thinking that the Almighty has it in for the Tweed and its unfortunate fishermen, the worst salmon catch in 2017 for 30 years, now followed by the first two months of 2018 with very low catches.

Could things get any worse?

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Like many anglers and boatmen, I blame the Tweed owners, River Tweed Commission and the Tweed Foundation, for, as we all know, everything that goes wrong on the Tweed is their fault.

Just as, of course, they should be able to control what happens to our fish in the North Atlantic (not a big place the North Atlantic, perfectly simple to do), so they should be able to stop the weather disrupting our fishing (not a big thing the global atmosphere, perfectly simple to do).

And while we are on the subject of blame, at the risk of stating the blindingly obvious, everyone’s hero Jezza Corbyn is right about that small matter of letting loose a nerve agent in Salisbury.

Need one say, it was not the Russians. That very nice man, “Uncle Vlad” Putin, a keen angler with strong opinions on the reduction in Tweed’s autumn salmon and grilse run, had nothing to do with it.

It was all the work of those useless, reactionary Tweed owners, the River Tweed Commission, the Tweed Foundation and their fiendishly clever scientists, Dr Ronald “Blofeld” Campbell, James “Scaramanga” Hunt and Kenny “Goldfinger” Galt.

If only they spent more time working out how to control what happens to our fish in the North Atlantic, and on ways of influencing global weather patterns so that our fishing is not disrupted…….. and spend less time manufacturing novichok, the more salmon we would all catch.

I commend this statement to the House.

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Over the next few weeks, we will try to deal with some of the comments from the Tweedbeats survey, with thanks again to all those who have taken the time to do so.

Amongst many “hot” topics, perhaps the hottest was Q6:

“Do you think the overall experience of fishing on the Tweed represents value for money?”

Quite apart from a few rants about “greedy owners” (well, we did ask!), the overall results from nearly 230 responses are revealing:

Absolutely value for money 5%

Reasonable 24%

Touch and go 30%

Not really 30%

Not at all 11%

You might call it a “score draw”, with 29% happy-ish, 30% not quite sure, and 41% unhappy-ish. But the fairest conclusion is that the balance of Tweed’s customers are on the “unhappy” side viz 71% say it is “touch and go” or worse.

Dangerous territory, of course, but a view from the other side of the fence might help those who are “unhappy”....or probably not, but here goes.

From speaking to owners, some think they will be lucky to break even in 2018, many will make a loss. Generally, beat incomes have dropped by over 50% since 2014, whereas expenses may have dropped by 10-20% at most, because so many of the costs are fixed.

Of course, there is, and can be, no cartel between owners as to what they charge, so maybe there are Tweed owners out there who are charging too much, but competition will, at some point, force them to bring their prices into line.

These fixed costs alone, on a lower Tweed beat like ours, are equivalent to over £300/salmon caught, based on the last 4 years catches since the decline in the autumn run.

Or over £360/salmon once you add on the 20% vat which vat registered owners have to levy, and then hand over to HMRC/the Government.

At nearly £400/salmon, which many middle and lower beat proprietors must charge just to break even, it is a figure which some will find shocking. But that is the reality of running a salmon fishery, with the main costs being the river board’s (RTC) annual levy, ghillies’/boatmen’s salaries, insurance, maintenance of banks, access tracks, roads, huts and boats etc.

Owners deserve, and will get, no sympathy, for their much reduced financial circumstances, but the days of Tweed being considered very expensive, as compared to other rivers, are coming, or have already come, to an end…...

…despite the unfavourable balance of opinion in the survey.