20 March 2016 News/Editorial
Despite the misty gloom which settled on much of the Borders for most of last week, bar a glorious Monday, the river has remained in fine fettle and salmon catches have been steady, if undramatic.
The Tweed March 5 year average is around 400. With the last 2 weeks both scoring over 100 and with 10 days fishing still to go, things are going along just about as we would both hope and expect.
It would seem those predicting the return of the spring runs of the 1930s to 1960s, based on no evidence whatever, are going to have to wait a little longer for their predictions to come true.
The scale of the difference between those heady spring days of yore, and now, is chasmic.
In March 1960, they never fished here with more than 2 rods (quite often just 1) so most of the pools were unfished, and the fishing day was 10am to 4.30pm, with a good hour for lunch. Those 2 (max) rods caught 210 salmon that month.
With 4 rods fishing now, starting at 9.30 and finishing at 5pm, we would be pleased to exceed 20 for the whole of March here, a not unusual daily catch in March 1960.
There is nothing, more than we are doing already, that we can do about that, and even keen hatchery folk admit that you cannot produce springers to order, or at least if you can, nobody has ever succeeded.
So, a consistent spring catch at the sort of levels we have become used to is to be celebrated as a considerable achievement until such time as nature, for reasons we cannot understand, decrees, as it did from the 1930s to 1960s, otherwise.
And the really extraordinary changes, as we are now forbidden by law to sell what we catch, as we release everything, and as more and more of us are fishing with fly only, are, that in March 1960……
(a) they killed all of the 210 salmon caught, most being sold, and
(b) every one of those 210 was caught spinning (golden sprat, minnow, prawn), not one on a fly.
This would have been pretty much the same on all beats then, a fly beginning to be used only in April as the water warmed up and a greased line became possible.
How things have changed.
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