news/editorial

19 May 2019 News/Editorial

The Tweed rods managed to catch 78 salmon and 8 sea trout last week, despite some of the least promising conditions you could imagine. These make the season’s figures to date (18th May) 809 salmon and 82 sea trout.

For five of the six fishing days last week the sun shone from a cloudless sky, while river levels shrank to summer level and below. Saturday provided proof, were it needed, that drizzly, cool, cloudy conditions are preferable if what you want to do is catch a salmon, with most of the thirty caught that day coming from downstream of Coldstream, with the notable exception of six at Birgham Dub.

There is encouragement to be had from catches holding up despite the worst possible fishing conditions. Things could be so much better, but only if the Almighty delivers some meaningful rain. There is nothing in any of the forecasts that indicates more than showers for the week ahead, or at least not until Thursday when it could become “more unsettled”, but not nearly “more unsettled” enough for the sort of rain the river needs.

Google tells me the Osage and Quapaw American Indians specialised in rain dances.

I wonder what they cost? On a “no rain, no fee” basis, of course.

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Malcolm and I were watching two herons standing on our cauld, stealthily, almost creepily, stalking smolts as they (the smolts not the herons) poured through the slap (gap). Not my favourite birds, they remind me of Charles’ reply in Four Weddings, when Carrie asked him if he was a skulker, “Well I don’t usually skulk a lot, but I suppose I could skulk if skulking were required”.

Herons are the ultimate skulkers, skulking is what they do.

As posses of smolts, and their telltale dimples with the occasional acrobatic silver leap, continued to go past us, we were remarking on one very large trout, probably brown but possibly sea, boiling at flies as they floated along.

Then, quite suddenly, there was what can only be described as a “haroosh” in the surface of the water, no otter, for there were no bubbles and nothing surfaced.

It must have been that very large trout, fed up with flies for the first course, needing some fresh Scottish (just) smolt for “the main”. Malcolm saw it happen again after I had gone.

So those skulking herons, and those big trout lurking (“lurkers” not “skulkers”, there is a difference) underwater, eat our smolts too! Add them to the list, “Come on RTC, you are not doing your job,” I hear some cry “ why aren’t you killing all of them as well as all those pesky cormorants and goosanders?”

Which deserves no more sensible a reply than the young girl received, during the first wedding reception, when she asked Scarlett “What’s bonking?” while they were both hiding under a table.

“Well, it’s kinda like table tennis, only with smaller balls.”

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How times change.

In the 1980s and 1990s the river shut down at the end of May, for marketable rod fishing at least. Letting would restart in the middle of August, at the earliest, and the bulk of the fish would be caught after 15th September, when all netting ceased.

If you had told us then that, here at the end of May 2019, you would be anticipating now the main run arriving in June, July and August, we would have thought you were barking mad. But, given rain, that is exactly what everyone is thinking/hoping.

All we need, to see if we are correct, is for those Osage and Quapaw Indians to do their stuff.