news/editorial

20 August 2017 News/Editorial

Malcolm Campbell’s fishing blog has always been compulsory reading. https://www.tweedbeats.com/beats/the_lees/blog

Not just because it tells the full story of each day’s fishing, which those sterile daily catch figures never can, but because you get the triumphs and woes of an avid vegetable grower and keeper of hens and guinea fowl, as well as a full commentary on the comings and goings of riverine wildlife, the otters, ospreys, kingfishers, deer, sky larks, geese, golden plover, and, of course, the first swallow and sand martin each spring…...and then there is always the weather, his intense dislike of wind, and last, but not least, the perennial battles with moles and how to catch them.

His Instagram pictures and videos just add a further graphic dimension to his written portrayal of the life of a Tweed boatman.

He and fellow boatman Paul Hume are dab hands with the mobile phone camera, and whereas we have had flocks of cormorants and goosanders to look (and snarl) at before, never before have I seen anything quite like the most recent video clip https://www.instagram.com/p/BYA0fNPhYyZ/?taken-by=tweedbeats

We all know seals eat, and physically damage, our salmon, but I have never seen one in the act of eating a salmon before…...and certainly not at Coldstream, 15 miles upriver from Berwick harbour.

It is an extraordinary clip, hopefully now etching in everyone’s mind exactly what seals do for fun…….they eat our salmon.

Now, no doubt Chris Packham would say something chippy about it all, like it is much better a seal eats that fish than it is caught by people like you and me, “the nasty brigade”, which I believe is what he calls people who shoot (I don’t )……. but he would no doubt extend that description to folk like us who like to angle.

But for most sensible people, there comes a point when predator damage is if not out of control, then close to it.

Yours truly has always been considered something of a “wet” when it comes to those three villains, cormorants, goosanders and seals (I am omitting dolphins because even the most zealous salmon protector has to draw the line somewhere). Not that I do not want further controls, it is just that in political terms it is hard to imagine politicians ever allowing anyone to reduce the seal population off the east coast.

But are we now reaching the point where assessment of the damage being done by these three villains does need fresh impetus, and some sort of new sensible management measures introduced?

I have never seen a figure of likely cormorant and goosander predation on Tweed parr and smolts, nor any supportable estimation of how many of our adult salmon those seal populations off the east coast of Northumberland either eat or damage.

But with increased research, and evidence, the time may be near when we should do that, and find out exactly how much damage they are doing. Perhaps only then can we get anyone to agree what to do about it.

Mr Packham and his friends won’t like it, nor, no doubt, would they have approved of Malcolm firing rockets at that seal to scare it away.

But I have no doubt he did the right thing.

It worked…….and we have acquired a stock of those rockets.

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I can’t quite make out the forecast for next week, with lots of confused low pressure systems milling about, but at the very least we might get more water on Tuesday/Wednesday.

Tomorrow, Monday, will be interesting.

After last week was spoiled by flooding, in the old days you would say that the first day of a clean and settled river, which it will be on Monday, would produce a fishing bonanza, even in mid/late August.

But will it?

What we know for sure is that there will be one less grilse to catch (see above) and that it was a bright sparkling fresh little grilse.

There were almost none of those in August 2016.

So maybe, just maybe, there is reason to hope.