news/editorial

1 May 2022 News/Editorial

After another encouraging fishing week, until Saturday when the fish seemed to switch off, it is always interesting to look at how we are doing this year as compared to years immediately past.

Thanks to proprietor Michael Miller, I have it on the best possible authority that the catches for Junction and Sprouston together, still unrecorded elsewhere, were just short of 200 after last Monday, so it is safe to assume a figure of around 200 to the end of April. That on its own is quite something for just two beats, but a quick scan of all the other beats brings me out with a total to 30th April of around 800 salmon for the season.

To compare to 2020 is not fair because some of March and the whole of April was locked down/out.

The 5 most recent years by comparison have been these (all to 30th April):

2021 472

2019 614

2018 434

2017 678

2016 1,077

That comparison continues the “encouraging” message, but it is important not to get carried away. 2016, a better spring than this, finished up with a rod catch of 7,683 for the year, at the time the lowest for many years before that. That said, 7,683 was almost 2,000 higher than what we caught here last year in 2021.

Rule of thumb, a reasonably good Tweed fishing year here should catch around 10,000 salmon, which would almost certainly have been achieved in 2020 but for the spring lockdowns, for we know that that April alone fish were seen jumping in all the lower beats (it was another very dry and sunny April), yet the rod catch score was recorded as nil.

All in all, there are reasonable grounds for optimism as we survey the rest of the season ahead. The joker in the pack is the weather; having endured a hot and dry summer in 2021, without wishing to be a killjoy, it would be nice for we anglers if summer 2022 could be rather more, well, “mixed” might cover it.

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My campaign for the whole of June not to be included in the Tweed spring catches continues; even Marine Scotland do not think that many fish coming in in June are springers, yet the Tweed continues to include them in the annual spring totals. Other than deliberately fooling ourselves that spring catches are better than they really are, I am not sure what the purpose is?

Ronald Campbell, long time chief Tweed biologist, always said that very few, if any, springers come into the Tweed after 15th June; with June catches generally (2021 excluded) on the increase, it would surely be a sensible compromise to take Tweed catches in the spring to 15th June (all other Scottish rivers are to 31st May), rather than overstate spring and consequently understate summer catches.

I know I am a boring accountant (manquee), but the point of producing figures which we all know to be wrong, escapes me. The point of all figures and statistics is that they should reflect what is going on as accurately as possible, not what is not going on.

Enough said (for now).

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We all like to be proved right in the “I told you so” stakes. Here is what I wrote in these pages on 20th March 2022 viz “ if the sunny and dry prognosis is correct, both farmers and fishers will rejoice initially, but will begin to complain if it goes on for too long”.

Six weeks later it is still dry. Ok it rained a bit yesterday, but the parched vegetation is such that the land will mop it up (I see Fishpal’s Leader reading is up this morning, but that gauge seems to have developed a mind of its own, of late, and may/should not be trusted).

And so it goes on; the forecast for next week is for a few dribbles of inconsequential rain, with temperatures rising to become really quite warm from midweek. The longer range prognoses appear to favour something more unsettled as we approach mid May.

Both farmers and fishers will be desperate for it, some proper heavy and steady rain, by then.