news/editorial

20 September 2020 News/Editorial

I have been thinking. A dangerous business. It went something like this. Weekly efforts of yore were too much, for me certainly, but more importantly for you. On 5th July came retirement, or certainly time out, in something of a blue funk at the (some say) perceived and (many others say) real behavioural shortcomings of our fellow anglers. Since when, there have been representations. So here’s the thing.

It seems Covid is re-surging and may, with its concomitant restrictions, be with you and me until Christmas, even beyond. We need something to do. So the bargain is this, I will continue to peddle this fishy rubbish, not every week but annoyingly intermittently, possibly monthly, if you will promise to read it. Deal?

Here goes.

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That there are many more fish in the Tweed in 2020 is a given. It has been a huge fillip in a singularly un-filliping year.

February and March were flooded off, so who knows if they would have yielded much to anglers, but I and others spent April and May sitting on the river bank wishing we could be “at them” as salmon leapt hither and yon. The English were at them from mid May followed by we downtrodden Scots, since when catch numbers have far exceeded recent years in all months.

The springers in May and June went straight through, even to Upper Tweed, since when those really very large numbers of summer salmon and grilse have been piling into the lowest beats, and have been very reluctant to move, despite plenty of water and at least two 6ft floods.

The colour profile has changed. Whereas a month/6 weeks ago pretty much everything we caught here was silver, now that has reduced to about one in ten. For we are catching those fish that have been sitting below us for a month or more and are beginning to move westwards. A month ago reports were of silver fish aplenty coming off the tide, not now.

Same old, same old, the “new (salmon fishing) normal” is that we get to late August/early September and nothing much more comes in. Which is not to say that we anglers will not catch them, for those that came in in the summer will be catchable until late October. After that? Probably not. And all the while, the colour of those we catch will, in the main, become darker.

Of course, as ever, this could all be wrong, for nature can make fools of us all, but the current trend seems horribly familiar.

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As for now, spinning ended on the 14th September, last Monday. That all forms of spinning were overused this year is a given. Pre 2014 spinning in the summer was when fish numbers were lower, and when the main run came in post 15th September, it was fly only.

Now the spinners, especially the upstream flying C variety, are “at it” when the main run comes in in May, June, July and August, and the numbers they catch smack not of angling, but of fishmongering. Such behaviour needs to change, if not voluntarily then, as with the bad practices of the shooting fraternity, it will be done by Government. Much better to put our own house in order before then.

It will need considerable leadership skills, and both understanding and compromise from all sides, to achieve that. But it must happen, for any form of disharmony on the riverbank is to be regretted. Fishing is a sport of harmony, contemplation and peace; the quicker we can all get back to that, especially in the beauty of those summer months, the better.

Just one example of why spinning is so bad. I fished a pool in the week before the 14th and in a particular likely spot had a pull on a regulation No. 8 Cascadey-thing, and saw a few more. Now, you spinners would then have put on something appalling, shiny and distinctly metallic, and then hammered it both upstream and down. I put on a medium sized Collie dog/Sunray and fished it again fast and across, and just under, the surface. The reaction was astonishing, fish surfing at it in full view. I caught one and had a couple more pulls.

Now that we are post 15th, you too will have to put away that wrist-flicking spinning rod, for that is all that is required to chuck its attendant missiles for miles, and do as I did. It is much more rewarding. Quite unlike spinning, it also requires at least a modicum of skill.

By way of a final footnote in this bit, if I see an angler on the other bank with a fly rod, I do try to wave a welcome and a friendly greeting. By way of contrast, if the person opposite is wielding a spinner and hurling missiles into the low and clear water on our side of the river, I keep my head down and move on, gritting my teeth while silently, sometimes not so silently, muttering unrepeatable oaths.

Is this being guilty of piscatorial discrimination, yet another crime, no doubt, in our increasingly woke world?

You bet. JK Rowling and me.

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My old friend Stephen Marsh-Smith died in early August. Here is a link to a tribute on the Wye and Usk Foundation website https://www.wyeuskfoundation.org/news/dr-stephen-marsh-smith-obe.

I saw him fishing here last year, and despite all the extraordinary skill and energy he has put into saving his beloved River Wye over the years, we wondered whether he was fighting against insuperable odds? He never said it, but I rather think I detected a degree of resignation. Can any of those rivers in the south really survive as thriving salmon rivers in this ever warming world? Once lost, it is the devil’s own job to get them back again. Not so long ago, between the 1930s and 1960s, the Wye regularly caught 6,000+ salmon every year, Robert Pashley (the Wye Wizard) himself catching over 10,000 salmon in that period. In 1936 he caught 678 salmon to his own rod, almost all on a fly, in that one season.

Now the once great Wye catches 200 or 300 salmon on the whole river in a season. Can any river “down there” survive when, as there was in 2020, there can be over a week of temperatures in the 30sC?

The story of the Wye, and of Stephen’s determination to save it, must act as a siren call to us all. We want what we have had and what we still have on this wonderful River Tweed to be there for our children and for their children. If we do all the right things now, despite its more southerly location as compared to the other great Scottish rivers, it can be saved. But only if we do all we can to protect it now.

Some say this is alarmist talk. Stephen was not one of them. When I fished a lot with him in the 1980s and 1990s, he had a dog called Pashley, which he loved.

Which says it all.

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On which theme, the concern of summer fishing and the apparent preference of our Tweed fish to come in then, is that the river will overheat causing them distress, or worse. Have you noticed that as soon as the water temperature and air temperature, especially humidity, climb, the fish will not take, or very few will? They do not like it.

We have been lucky these last two summers, with not too much heat and plenty of water. What will happen if we get a summer of prolonged drought and heat? Water quality and quantity are the sine qua non of salmon “wellbeing” (a nicely woke word in our not so nicely woke world) and survival in our rivers.

The Tweed Forum and others are doing a great job in planting trees to provide vital shade on our tributaries. Just as almost nobody bar Bill Gates saw this Covid pandemic coming, it is too easy for us all to worry ourselves either not at all, or about the wrong things. We need to worry about our water, its quantity and its heat, and plan/act accordingly.

As a matter of some urgency.

For those who want to know more, especially about the massive tree planting, and consequent funding, that is needed along our tributaries’ margins to provide the necessary shade to reduce temperatures, read this excellent piece from Fisheries Management Scotland http://fms.scot/fisheries-management-scotland-call-for-urgent-reform-of-tree-planting-grants-to-save-our-freshwater-habitat/

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And finally, our fishing hut was broken into last night, all rods, reels, waders, fishing jackets, fly lines, flies, all gone. We will have to step up our security, CCTV, alarms etc to be considered, as just locking and bolting all doors and windows appears to be not enough, or at least nothing that determination, brute force and a crow bar or two will not render ineffective.

However charitable you might feel normally towards others, it is hard not to wish that something especially nasty, ghoulish even, befalls the perpetrators.

That’s it for now, quite a lot to assimilate in this reprise. Thank you for bothering to read it.

Until the next time, in a month or so..