news/editorial

19 August 2018 News/Editorial

The Tweed rod score last week was better, 240 salmon and 43 sea trout, making the season’s totals 1,685 salmon and 354 sea trout.

Things perked up on Friday and Saturday, mainly below Kelso, with a combination of wind, some extra water and high tides encouraging fish to come in from the sea and move upstream.

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So what is it to be this autumn?

If the Tyne Riding Mill counter is anything to go by, the jury is still out.

Neither the June count of 4,327, nor the (just released) July figure of 7,966 was anything exceptional, indeed, combined they were the lowest since 2014….but then even with Keilder compensation releases, the drought and heat of those 2 months in 2018 must have had some depressing effect on upstream migration.

We have all slipped into an acceptance that our rivers are going more “summer” than “autumn”, more “salmon” than “grilse”, based on the last few years when very little in the way of fresh salmon or grilse has come in after late August.

But then…. there were very few salmon this spring/early summer, and now more grilse than salmon are turning up in mid/late August, exactly the opposite of what most experts, and students of historic salmon run changes, predicted .

Nature is full of surprises, proof, if it were needed, that all our theorising about what is happening to our salmon is just so much hot air…..although, if change is happening (and most still think it is), those self same students of history would caution that change is not a straight line, so that you will get years that do not fit the trend….and that it is the trend over many years which is relevant/important.

For the present, what the Tweed needs now is a flood….followed by a good old fashioned autumn run of grilse and salmon.

All we have seen so far, in the lowest beats, is mainly grilse, with, I hear, plenty seen jumping but they have not been taking, so that catches have not reflected abundance….or at least they did not until Friday last week when over 80 were caught in the day.

Above Kelso there is little evidence of any fish, despite the odd pockets of angling success.

With a little more water on its way via Teviot and Ettrick this morning, with a showery start to the week ahead followed by a cooler, fresher end, there is not much hope of any real immediate change.

For it is only a good 6ft flood, or larger, which will both clean the river and spread the fish out over all the main beats.

The lowest beats may not want it…..

…. but everyone else does.

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Spare a thought for those great far northern rivers, the Naver, Thurso and Halladale, and especially their long suffering ghillies and the fishermen/women who were hoping for a successful annual fishing holiday on their banks.

I have been there and seen them; they have all but dried up, so that you cannot fish, even if you want to. They have lost an entire season, with no sign of relief as every Atlantic depression, so far, seems to fizzle out long before it gets up there.

We went trout fishing, and good fun it was too, especially Loch Harray on Orkney…..but our intended target, the Naver, provided a melancholy sight every evening as we returned to base.

So for Tweed fishers, as with everything else in life, it is worth remembering, precious little comfort maybe, that there is always somebody worse off than you.