news/editorial

1 November 2015 News/Editorial

I have a confession.

Last week’s (mercifully) short effort in these pages was a cop out, an exercise in misguided self censorship.

The real (original) one was better and longer but, I concluded, too gloomy to print. Yes, we had had a little water and, whereas the (again mercifully) short substitute left open the question of whether it would produce any more fresh fish and gave some hope, the real (suppressed) one, over which I had sweated and agonised, left everyone in no doubt that water on its own does not produce fresh fish.

I did not print it because it was too honest, too depressing for those reading it who still have to come here to fish.

I know the fishing perked up for a bit last week in places, but I hear tell not many of those caught were remotely silver.

The original, self censored, version for last week was correct, water alone cannot produce more fresh fish running into the river……...and it most certainly did not.

That the last two autumns have gone seriously tits-up in (comparative) fishing terms is not in doubt, both coming in at about half the catch we have come to expect. Some beats have done ok this year (mainly the Junction, Tillmouth, Birgham Dub and, one would think even if they do not show their figures, Tweedmill) but even they will struggle to hit their 5 year averages. Others like us here at the Lees, the Warks, Learmouth and many others will not get to half their 5 year averages and, most others might do that but will still be 30/40% down; more bizarrely, some will have caught many more before the autumn, than in the autumn itself.

That in itself is interesting, so does it begin to herald an erratic switch from late running to earlier running fish, more towards salmon than grilse? Certainly November 2014 was poor, which makes what will happen this November all the more interesting.

Those who know, reckon that any switch from predominantly grilse to salmon is likely to be inconsistent, and to an extent you can already see that. 2012 was mainly salmon, 2013 mainly grilse, and 2014 and 2015 a comparative lack of both (if our mix of those caught here is any indicator).

But all this conjecture and comparative gloom is very different from saying there are not enough fish……...for the river. If we stick with a summer/autumn catch figure of 6,000 or more for both 2014 and 2015, and assuming a catch rate of 10% (our own researches indicate this is on the high side for late running fish), then we will have over 50,000 salmon heading for the spawning beds to keep the species going.

Assuming they spread themselves out reasonably evenly over the various spawning tributaries, assuming again some 40% are female and where one big female can have 12,000 eggs, it does not take much imagination to see that this is a very satisfactory number from a procreation point of view.

But it isn’t for us fishermen.

Simple maths will tell you that if you want to catch 10,000+ summer/autumn fish rather than 6,000, we need a run of over 100,000.

In neither 2014 nor 2015 have we had anything like that.

Critics will say (correctly) that I am/ we are all guessing, the doom mongers that there are far fewer than 50,000 (that we catch more than 10% and a lot of them twice), while the optimists will say there are many many more than you ever imagine (quoting that whenever you look over a bridge there are 10 there for every one you see jump) and that our own figures show we have never caught more than 5% once, let alone twice.

The truth is we do not know.

Two of the most important figures you need to run any productive commercial business (and salmon fishing is that) are:

(a) what are your raw materials (smolts going to sea) and

(b) what are your finished goods for sale (salmon coming back from the sea).

River managers here, and on most other rivers, have no accurate idea of (b), and on no rivers at all anywhere do they have even the remotest idea of (a), the number of smolts which go out to sea.

The sea is blamed for everything nowadays, and we all have to bow to the collective scientific belief that smolt survival is now 3% or less whereas it used to be 10% and higher, but here on Tweed we have produced pretty startling salmon numbers of late despite these poor 3% smolt survival rates.

So maybe 2014 and 2015 have been poor because not enough smolts, for whatever reason, went to sea in 2012, 2013 and 2014 to produce the salmon and grilse numbers we have become accustomed to? And maybe in the change, if change it is, from grilse to salmon, while the numbers of grilse are in decline, it takes time for the salmon numbers to build up?

We will never know…….but what has happened here in 2014 and 2015 is no threat to the Tweed salmon species.

But it has not been good for fishermen.

If there is one thing which unites writers about Tweed salmon of past decades and centuries, it is that salmon fishing as they knew it was under threat, in terminal decline, from pollution, from excessive netting, from this, from that and also……. from the other.

They were all wrong, the fishing here can still be extraordinary, decades and centuries later, and I refuse to join them simply because of two below par autumn seasons on the Tweed.

If you had been here in 1967 when UDN struck, as I was, you would have seen the very worst, with every salmon in the river in April that year either dead or dying of the disease. I can still see the lime pit at Carham with 100s of rotting corpses buried in it. You would have said that Tweed salmon fishing would never be the same again.

If I am allowed one personal snippet, just 2 years later, in 1969, on 15th September, I caught 14 salmon in the day at Upper Pavilion on a floating line, and 2 weeks after that, on October 3rd, 12 (mainly big) salmon in an afternoon at Middle Mertoun.

It is a truism that few of us recognise the good times while we are having them, only in retrospect. All those years of mega 12,000 to 23,000 pa salmon catches from 2003 to 2013 were the good times.

I have no doubt they will come again, but if we are in the process of change…. it might take time to get there…. and it might not be quite the same.

Just over 100 years ago, on 4th November 1912, Hugh Valdive Warrender caught 8 salmon at Sprouston on a single hook 1/0 Jock Scott and 1/0 Silver Grey and the weights were 38, 26, 23, 23, 22, 17, 17 and 14lbs…...an average of almost 26lbs, something of which even the mighty Norwegian Alta would now be proud.

And in 6 consecutive days fishing here at the Lees in November 1903, Mr AP Kidson caught 26 salmon and grilse averaging 21lbs (with the 3 grilse weighing 6 lbs each, seriously damaging the average)…..his 3 biggest were 32, 30 and 28lbs.

That could be what a salmon, as opposed to a grilse (which is what we are all used to), dominated autumn looks like.

It might never happen again quite like that…..but then again it might.

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