news/editorial

1 August 2021 News/Editorial

Figures do not lie, however much optimists might like it, if they did. Last year, in 2020, the June and July salmon catch combined was within a gnat’s crochet of 3,000. Here in 2021, the same two months could get to 700, certainly not more.

Last year, the Tweed annual total was 9,614, the highest since 2013. Simple maths tells us that, so long as the rest of 2021 equals the same scores as 2020, then the very best annual total will be around 7,000.

As usual, everyone is casting around for excuses, low water conditions, a cold late spring, Russian and other trawlers, you name it. The trouble is that none of them really stack up, and the reality is that 2020 had the sunniest and driest April and May on record, yet none of this deterred masses of fish coming in. The combined rainfall totals here for April and May 2020 were 30.5 mm; the 2021 equivalents were 80.5 mm, getting on for 3 times as much. For the lowest beats, which fish coming in can always reach, it is only in the last 3 weeks, in July, that drought and heat has been a serious factor.

The truth is that, until recently, the salmon simply have not been there. Day after day beats nearest the tide at Tweedhill, Ladykirk and Horncliffe have been fishing, yet reports have been of fish neither seen nor caught.

That has changed, even if the paucity of water has not. It will rain sometime, but every day it does not, denies our loyal fishers their much anticipated good fishing holiday, unless you are lucky enough to be going as close as possible to the sea and Berwick. At current levels, it must be almost impossible for anything other than the smallest grilse to progress above Coldstream. The river is that low.

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Somehow the rain last week hit the rivers in the northeast of Scotland, but none of those in the far north or south. The subsequent results for the Spey, Dee, Findhorn et al, speak for themselves. They have been catching plenty.

As more and more fishers either decide not to come here to the Tweed, in its shrunken state, or come but leave early, the down-the-line financial consequences are impossible to calculate. It is, after all, just one year, but after the step-up in numbers in 2020, this year so far has been a bitter pill to swallow. Fishers are a pretty loyal and phlegmatic cohort, well used to the ups and downs of salmon fishing, and who knows, 2022 might be a repeat of 2020, or even better?

As for rain, nothing much is forecast until after Wednesday, when Yr No. is forecasting 1 ½ inches between Thursday and next Monday at Eskdalemuir. Their predictions thus far have been way wide of the mark, the wrong way. We can only hope that this time their estimates are more than fulfilled. The smart money is that it will need between 2 and 3 inches over 2 days to rise the river over the necessary 3ft to both flush it out and get the fish down the bottom moving up in numbers.

If this all sounds like a broken record, it is. Until it rains, and properly.