20 May 2018 News/Editorial
At least there is some consistency about Tweed’s rod catches of late, even if they are consistently low. Last week yielded 48 salmon and 3 sea trout, making 522 salmon and 47 sea trout for the season to 19th May 2018.
After such a wet, cold and prolonged winter, the predicted antidote, it seems, is now upon us. It is glorious to see the greens of the trees at this time of year, and the bluebells and other wild flowers in all their glory, all the more stunning in the ceaseless sunshine of last week.
None of this is what fishermen want.
More of the same is the consensus of weather forecasts, perhaps with some cloud on Tuesday, but then sunshine all the way, not just for the rest of the week, but, some say, for a week or two more thereafter.
It will be hard going, you would think, for all but the lowest beats, and the best chances will be both early and late in the day.
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To the Philiphaugh Cauld (aka the Murray Cauld/ the Ettrick Cauld) last Friday for the Tweed Foundation’s benefactors day.
The main event was the official opening of the new fish counter and cameras, after an absence of several years during which the cauld was completely rebuilt, and a vastly improved fish pass installed, alongside two Archimedes screws. It is a most impressive structure, and the Tweed Foundation, Sir Michael Strang-Steel, the Rodger family and the Scottish Government (who paid for much of the counter/camera installation) are to be congratulated for achieving a very satisfactory outcome to what had become an intractable problem.
Understandably, the good folk of Selkirk did not want lose their last remaining cauld after RTC Superintendent Colonel Mike (“Bomber”) Ryan had blown the other one up in the 1960s, without so much as a “by your leave”.
One imagines the main purpose for Selkirk of keeping a cauld was to go on seeing salmon jumping, despite this being a very obvious sign that the salmon were having difficulty finding a way up, and harming themselves in the process by constantly jumping against the cauld apron.
Thankfully, hardly a fish is ever seen now at the new cauld, so effectively is the new pass working.
This is very good for our fish, maybe not quite so for those Selkirk inhabitants hoping to go on enjoying a (mainly) autumn migration spectacle.
The score going through the counter so far this year is 12 salmon and 13 otters….although the likelihood is that the otter is the same one, 13 times.
It is just having some fun swimming up and down in the faster water.
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Of more interest to those who continue to think that the Tweed produces no juveniles, and that they have all been eaten by birds, is the work now happening on counting migrating smolts on the Gala water.
I will not spoil it by giving any clues as to numbers, but biologist James Hunt says that they came surprisingly late this year, triggered by who knows what, maybe the long cold spring/winter providing the delay.
Although we continue to see no cormorants and remarkably few goosanders down here, which is good, I hear tell of a very large goosander flock further upstream.
This seems to be a phenomenon of this time of year, for 2 years ago I counted a flock of 70+ at the bottom of Wark’s Willows Pool, also in May.
Whether it is the males congregating while their mates sit on eggs, or immature birds getting together for some company, or a bit of both, we do not know.
Whatever the cause, it is most unwelcome, and very bad news for any smolts trying to swim past them.
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