21 July 2019 News/Editorial
Tweed’s catch for last week was 73 salmon and 56 sea trout, bringing the season’s totals to 1,953 salmon and 866 sea trout, within 90% accuracy.
These summer fishing doldrums will go on just so long as we lack water. A foot of extra water on Saturday (yesterday) could be followed by a much bigger rise tomorrow, if meteorological predictions of the extent of the rain both tonight and early tomorrow morning prove correct.
If so, will there be more fish to catch?
Indications from the Tweed Foundation’s research netting at Paxton are positive, with both salmon and grilse catches far exceeding anything seen last year. The fish caught are tagged and released to see how many anglers catch. Thus far, I am told, the answer is none, proof, if any were needed, how few of the total population we anglers ever catch, or as Dr Ronald Campbell used to put it “You fishermen are not very good.”
After the rain tonight, it will become hot midweek, possibly followed by a brief thundery breakdown on Wednesday/Thursday, before more normal temperatures persist from Friday.
With all those extreme conditions forecast to afflict our immediate atmosphere over the next few days, any predictions about fishing success, or indeed fishing at all, would be foolish.
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The RTC annual report now shows the monthly salmon catches for the last 10 years.
Those wedded to the idea that the spring is a better time to fish than the summer on the Tweed, might be surprised by the following 10 year averages:
February 141 salmon
March 301 "
April 440 "
May 620 "
June 501 "
July 570 "
At the risk of indulging in a little personal dig at those who advocate both (a) weed cutting during the last two fishing weeks of July and, as a result, (b) beats not letting their fishing because the moving weed will make it impossible, why do they think fishing in July is so dispensable? Imagine the outcry if you suggested the whole river not letting two weeks in April, statistically a much less good month than July?
The solution is simple, as was mentioned last week in these pages. There are four Sundays in July, do the weed cutting then. And if it floods, as it did almost throughout summer 2012, the weed will go uncut and, as far as any of us can remember, that year was remarkable for the lack of anyone complaining about losing fish in the uncut weed.
Do it on a Sunday, or not at all if conditions do not allow, then everyone will be happy.
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Whilst on Tweed’s monthly averages, fishing statisticians, and those who fish here in the later months, might find the following of interest.
Tweed catches for February to July really have not changed that much over the last 10 years. The same consistency cannot be claimed by the (late) summer and autumn. There has been a marked change since 2014 in these more “back end” months, so that 5 year averages (2014 to 2018) are far more representative of current reality.
Here they are:
August 1,148
September 1,176
October 1,842
November 595
Some may be surprised that October is still the best, and by some distance, although mitigated by the reduced quality of the fish since 2014, in October and November in particular.
Not only that, but how many would have thought that August has been just as good as September over the last 5 years, with August having the better quality of fish?
If water arrives over the next 24/36 hours, thereafter we should be able to assess the impact on catches, here in 2019, of the cessation of the North East Drift and T&J nets. Despite the doomladen sceptics who disagree with almost anything up-beat said in these pages, it can only be positive.
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