22 July 2018 News/Editorial
The Tweed catch for last week was 59 salmon and 1 sea trout, making the running totals 1,144 salmon and 263 sea trout for the season to 21st July 2018.
The weather is the same (hot and dry), the river is the same (hot and low) and none of the reputable forecasters are predicting any change (from hot and mainly dry) in the coming week.
Rain is forecast on and off, but not enough to drench the scorched earth and allow any excess to flood the river.
We cling to one hope….that in the past, droughts have often come to an end when forecasters have not precisely predicted the breakdown.
A forlorn hope maybe, but it is all we have.
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Another excellent and informative edition of “The River” came out last week and you can find it at http://www.rivertweed.org.uk/news/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/2018-07-The-River-Issue-5.pdf
Those of us who, long ago, were convinced that talk of hatcheries in solving any Tweed salmon shortages were both simplistic and positively dangerous, will be delighted at the conclusions of this latest edition.
Maybe the message is, slowly but surely, getting through to the pro-hatchery brigade that when one small tributary, the Gala, can produce 30,000 smolts, as it did this year, that the problems are not in juvenile production within the river, but in juvenile survival once they get to the sea.
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We are off to the Findhorn for 3 days….or at least to where the Findhorn used to be, as it is so low it can be hardly running.
The drought has already ruined their season, as it has all northern rivers, whose prime time this is, and most of whose seasons close in 10 weeks time at the end of September.
It must be that, after 2 months of the severest drought, every single river in Scotland, even the larger ones, will by now have 1,000s of salmon wanting to come in from the sea…..
……. but unable to do so.
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