news/editorial

20 March 2022 News/Editorial

So, we all know the drill by now. It was dry for January, wet and windy for February and the first half of March, with consequent endless ups and downs in river levels, and now it will be dry for the next 2 weeks, possibly more, as the weather lurches from one extreme to another.

If the dry and sunny prognosis is correct, both farmers and fishers will rejoice initially, but one or other, probably both, will begin to complain if it goes on for too long. Nothing new in that, I hear you cry. For now, there is a massive high pressure lodging itself over us and the near continent, the birds are singing, the sun is shining out of a clear blue sky, God in in his heaven and all is well with our world…or at least it would be if we could ever, even from over 1,000 miles away, for one minute forget about the ever deepening horrors of Ukraine.

The catches, no doubt at least partly affected by two small rises, were less than 50 salmon last week, but crucially missing those two stalwarts, Junction and Sprouston. March is turning out to be distinctly average, but with another ten fishing days to go, and with the river settled, you never quite know.

For getting on for 50 years now, springs have become very predictable. Some of us still maintain that the Tweed should no longer be counting June as the spring, both because no other rivers do and because in doing so, with summer fish if anything increasing, it is misleading to include what are clearly not spring salmon in the spring catch.

Quite what the point is in knowingly inflating the spring catch is anyone’s guess, but one suspects it is no more than “we have always done it that way”, understandable in decades past when June’s summer fish were scarce or, the few that there were, were caught by the nets.

But now?

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Some will have noticed the absence of Malcolm’s weekly beat blog. If the Muse is still with him when he returns from places both hot and bone-fishy, then with any luck he will be online again in April for the rest of the 2022 season.

Absent the large cormorant flocks, there are still two or three stragglers hanging around the points in our Cauld Stream. As he is an accredited RTC licencee, my advice to those few remainers is to leg it to the coast before he gets back….. and before he gets his eye in.

As for next week, these pages will be taking a short break. We are by way of engaging in the noble art on those two northern streams, the Spey and the Carron, and if the weather holds, the highlands will be looking their very best. In the meantime, the Tweed next week will be prime and it will be a joy to be out there, better still if there are some more springers about.

Until Sunday 3rd April.