20 October 2019 News/Editorial
A better week, with largely settled conditions, and scores of 304 salmon and 43 sea trout reflect that, bringing the season’s totals to date to 19th October to 5,250 salmon and 1,819 sea trout, all of course within 90% accuracy.
As the annual figure for salmon goes well over the 5,000 mark, what are we to make of it all? In contrast to 2018’s heat and drought, fishing conditions have been pretty good throughout, so it would be very gloomy indeed if the 2019 end of season score were to be lower than 2018. It is most unlikely to be that now. The 2018 grand total to 30th November was 5,644.
Of particular note is that there are some fresh grilse, not many, but some, unlike eg 2017 when we never saw a sea liced salmon or grilse here after August. But will they continue to come into November? And what about more of those big multi sea winter salmon which are supposed to be the future? They are more absent than the grilse.
As for next week, with the dirty small flood from yesterday’s downpours now waning and clearing, dry and settled is the unusual weather prognosis, for this autumn, with high pressure in charge. It should last for a few days at least. As for the fish, well they could be anywhere, for there has been nothing to stop them going wherever they please for weeks now, such has been the amount of water.
Which is good, for them at least.
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My old friend Mark, a very fine fisherman and the kindest of men, sent me a book about fishing, an anthology of learned writings on the noble art, into which I have been dipping.
I was struck by a passage from Lord Grey of Falloden’s book “Fly Fishing”, on the competitive nature of fishing, especially when we are young. I will spare you the whole thing, but the following excerpt struck a chord.
“At first the young angler, wholly bent on success, may value his skill chiefly for it results; he dwells upon these, compares each good day with his own previous records, is probably competitive and anxious that on any given day his basket should be as heavy as those of others who have been fishing, he is not a little disappointed when he thinks he has done well, he finds at the end of the day someone else has done much better. As long as this lasts, an angler has not yet attained the greatest enjoyment of his sport. He is missing more pleasure than he enjoys; he is preventing himself from having that detachment of mind, and freedom and independence of spirit, which are among the charms of angling”.
Ah, there you have it, unattractive competitiveness and “the numbers game”, the scourges of true enjoyment of angling, pandered to by websites such as this where the “Catches” page is by far the most visited.
Nowadays, in my dotage, the perfect day is catching a salmon in the morning and having a couple of offers in the rest of the day, so long as there is a chance of one is all that is needed. Others catching more is of no concern, luckily, for they usually do. But the critics will deny this achieves angling maturity, the nirvana that is “detachment of mind, and freedom and independence of spirit”, and thereby lack of competitiveness a la Lord Grey, in favour of the refrain most commonly levelled at lucky folk like me. ”You are spoilt, able to fish whenever you like” they cry.
Or as one of my anonymous correspondents recently put it “You really are a f------g upper class prick”
Well quite.
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Some extraordinary reaction last week to the Instagram picture (for those who don’t know, click on the camera icon top right on this (or any) page) of a sea liced cock grilse caught here, clearly dead.
Now, as a matter of personal choice, you may have decided, like me, that you will not kill any salmon you catch until stocks recover, but by the same token I will defend the right of anyone who wants to, to keep one, just one, to eat if they so wish, so long as it is caught after 1st July, so long as it is fresh, preferably a cock, and preferably also a (small) grilse. There is cold logic to all of these provisos which I will not bore you with now.
That fish on Instagram ticked all four of those boxes. As for the comments on Instagram about catch and release, we know from numerous studies that over 90% survive to spawn, at which dead fish are remarkably bad.
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