18 September 2022 News/Editorial
If the Tweed rods did not catch 1,000 salmon last week, then the final total will be within a gnat’s crochet of it. The online visible beats, Ladykirk, Horncliffe, Pedwell et al all did really well, as did “invisible” ones such as Tweedmill, West Newbiggin, Lennel, possibly even Watham and Dritness, for they too will have had good scores. The main key was geographical, simply to be situated somewhere east/downstream of Coldstream.
The 3ft rise last weekend, allied to falling, clearing and above all cooling (it dropped from nearly 60F to around 50F by the end of the week) waters, were the perfect ingredients for angling success, “success” that is if you were lucky enough to have some fish. There is nothing so grotesquely partial as salmon fishing, when it comes to the distribution of favours.
The curmudgeonly amongst you would say that 90+% of the fish caught were in varying shades of brown (we caught just one here that you could call fresh) and that the distribution of fish was extraordinarily patchy viz Birgham Dub had 48 and Carham (immediately below the Dub) caught just 8. Above Kelso, with exception of Middle Mertoun and Rutherford, none of those great beats reached double figures, some barely got off the mark, whilst Ladykirk (halfway between Coldstream and the sea) caught 150.
On a reasonably representative sample (84) of those caught last week, assuming anything 6lbs and under is a grilse, 23 (27%) were grilse and 61 (73%) were salmon, the latter almost all between 8 and 15lbs. Previous assumptions about when salmon take a fly/can be caught by rod and line, might also need to be looked at again, as tagging data from Paxton indicated that once a salmon has been in the river for 3 weeks or more, it becomes difficult/impossible to catch. That could well be true in normal circumstances, but a 3ft flood after weeks of drought, followed by several cold nights, almost a frost, is guaranteed to make any salmon come on the take. Most of the 1,000 salmon and grilse caught last week had been in the river for much longer than 3 weeks.
The partiality of salmon fishing is even greater, for those beats that did well, when you consider what those unlucky enough to have been here the previous week had to endure. Whereas the good salmon fisher will always catch more than the less good, there is no substitute for being in the right place at the right time. Better by far to be lucky than good, and best to be both lucky and good.
As for next week, there could be some rain on Thursday, if not enough to rise water levels, and it may become somewhat warmer and windier from the west/southwest. In short, it will be largely dry, not the news those higher up the river want to hear. You would think that catches, even where there are fish, will begin to drop off somewhat as water levels fall further, if (mercifully) there is now a complete absence of that horrible floating weed.
Given the colour and general condition of the fish being caught, it cannot be long before they will have to push their way westwards anyway, as they approach spawning time. There are signs of the weather becoming more unsettled the following week, as we move towards and into October.
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Whilst the numbers of salmon being caught by the rods is undeniably good news, it is equally incontrovertible that the fish being caught now came into the river in June, July and August but have failed to progress because of the summer drought and heat.
Those who have short memories have been heard to bemoan the absence of nets in the river, largely all bought out between 1987 and 2003, on the grounds that they controlled the numbers of seals and kept the poachers at bay.
For those who can recall the 1980s when in-river (legal) netting was in full flow, the poaching between Coldstream and the Berwick beaches was completely out of control, the number of nets seized by the bailiffs measured in several 1,000s. Now single net seizures are all that are reported, and very few of them.
But above all, if you had 20+ full time commercial river nets now, as in the early 1980s, those summer fish that the rods are catching (viz last week) would almost all have been fished out and killed by the (then) netting stations at Tillmouth, Ladykirk, Horncliffe, Tweedhill and Pedwell, to name just a few. Not only that, but it is now highly illegal (for nets or anyone else) to kill seals, and to do so risks extreme peril and penalties for the transgressor.
Any Tweed rod fisherman who now looks back nostalgically at those days of heavy in-river netting should, instead, be grateful to those netting owners who were happy to be bought out, and to the Tweed proprietors at the time who put up a shedload of money to achieve the buyouts in an orderly downstream (working from the top down) manner.
Maybe that is too much to expect.
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