news/editorial

21 February 2016 News/Editorial

Let’s keep this simple, which things never are, but for this purpose……...

There are only 2 things needed for successful salmon fishing, the first, obviously, is salmon, and preferably in large numbers, as we know that rod fishing only ever catches 1 in 10 at best in large rivers like the Tweed in the autumn, maybe 1 in 3 or 4 for springers.

But, secondly, you need good water conditions, to encourage fresh fish to come in from the sea, to keep the salmon moving upstream and to allow the pools to work properly.

Now we know we did not have as many salmon as we would have liked last year, but in the 78 days fishing in the months of September, October and November, Tweed’s prime time, there were 6, yes just 6, days when the water was at what we here would consider a good fishing height.

On our gauge a good height is a fairly wide tolerance between 1’6” and 2’6”.

Just 6 days out of 78.

I was reminded of this when on Wednesday last week, just as the river had sunk to a good fishing height, it flooded again, back up to over 7 feet and filthy dirty. So far in February we have had 18 fishing days, and just 2 have been within our 1’6” to 2’6” good fishing height range.

All of which makes it 8 out of the last 96 fishing days when Tweed’s water conditions have been good, an extraordinary run of bad fortune for our fishers.

The causes, of course, are also simple, global warming, El Nino and all that, where the weather see-saws between extreme drought (the first 60 of those 96 days, when our gauge was under, mainly well under, 1’6”) and extreme flood (the last 36 fishing days from mid November to date, when our gauge has been over, mainly well over, 2’6”).

As the heat of El Nino dissipates, can we hope for more even weather and water distribution in the rest of 2016?

If my reading of the forecast for the rest of February and the start of March is right, the jetstream is slackening, it is getting calmer, colder which almost always means less rain, so once the current wind and showers drift away, we may then, at last, get some fishing days within our perfect height range.

We may get more “good fishing height” days in the next 2 weeks than we have had in all those 96 fishing days since 1st September……... but then will there be any fish?

We have a wedding here on 18th June; a gentle, warm southwesterly with a few of those white fluffy floaty clouds, but mainly sun, would be good.

It is more than my life is worth to ask The Man Upstairs for more than that this year... that is for generally less extreme, prolonged swings in weather in the rest of 2016.

But you can.