news/editorial

19 April 2015 News/Editorial

Tweed’s spring fishing, for the rods at least, has customarily, in recent years, been treated as ending on 30th June.

This is not to say that the rods do not catch some early summer fish (ie non springers) in June, or that springers are not caught further upriver (hopefully all returned unharmed as obvious old springers), after 30th June. But it is a reasonable date at which to draw a line, to assess, based on rod catches, what the strength of the spring run has been.

Here are the figures for the last 6 years spring salmon catches, deliberately set in two columns of 5 years, with most of the right hand column still to be filled in, but as the “parent to child” generational gap for springers is almost always 5 years nowadays, it gives an idea of how things are going in the continuing effort to keep a self sustaining population of our vital early running salmon, by not killing any.

2009 1,147 2014 1,737

2010 1,445 2015

2011 3,072 2016

2012 2,842 2017

2013 2,110 2018

The only thing you can say so far, based on the figures above, is that by a distance the worst of the past 6 years, 2009, with only 1,147 caught in the 5 months to 30th June, produced a much better result in terms of the children of 2009, being the 2014 catch of 1,737, not a good number in itself, but nevertheless an increase of 51% on the parent generation.

Those who dislike catch and release will never be persuaded, but it takes quite a leap of faith to think that that 51% increase would have happened had all the 1,147 salmon caught in 2009 been killed. To see improvements, from an obviously concerning very low base in 2009, is the whole point of preserving, by not killing, early running fish.

With a 5 month spring for accounting purposes, here we are, shortly after the middle of April, pretty much half way through spring 2015.

So how is it going?

Well, not great…. but ok-ish so far.

At the halfway point, the score looks to be about 650-700, and April has stalled a bit, with the total creeping up by less than 10 per day.

Predictions are futile, of no value, but if it goes on as it is, even getting to the same figure as 5 years ago of 1,445 will be good…..but you never know.

That is the joy, and unpredictability, of salmon fishing.

5 years ago in April 2010 we caught 0 here for the whole month, not a single salmon, despite it being fished every day…...and yet 2010 turned into a record year as a whole.

At the time, 5 years ago exactly, all was doom and gloom…….and nobody predicted what was about to happen.

Most of us are wishing that something similar is around the corner.

But is it?

It might be easier predicting the precise outcome of the imminent General Election…..than answering that one correctly.