22 June 2014 News/Editorial
By way of a final postscript on Tweed’s 2014 spring salmon fishing (and a rather nervous look forward to the autumn), it has been a few months of extraordinary contrasts.
Whereas the Floors beats and the Junction, covering in total about 4 miles of river, have seldom had it so good in recent times, those beats from Carham downwards may never have done so badly, or at least not since the disease/UDN outbreaks of the late 1960s/early 1970s. Those between Carham and the Junction have done ok, as have those above Floors, but nothing to write home about.
A salmon river without salmon is a mournful sight; I walk my dogs along the riverbank every morning before breakfast, and from 1st February to date this year, I have yet to see a salmon jump; not one in getting on for 5 months.
The last poor-ish spring on Tweed was in 2010; so depressed was one boatmen after that spring that I ventured the view that by the end of 2010 his beat, indeed the whole river, would have had a record year.
He looked at me pityingly, with the sort of look you give an old friend who has been on the sauce and cannot get off it.
And so, without wishing to imbue myself with too many prophetic or biblical powers…it came to pass, and in spades, if a catch for the year of over 23,000 provides any marker.
I cannot recall ever having received due acknowledgement for such dazzling prescience. Indeed, said boatman has been remarkably silent on the subject ever since, no doubt in awe of such startling predictive genius.
So what, I hear you say, of autumn 2014?
Whereas, for the spring fish, you look back (on average) 5 years to find the parentage, for the autumn you (in the main) look back 3, 4 or 5 (for the technical, grilse either being 2:1s (born from 2010 parents, born early spring 2011, winters 2011/12 and 2012/13 in the river, and 2013/14 in the sea) or 1:1s (born from 2011 parents), or for salmon either being 1:2s (born from 2010 parents) or 2:2s (born from 2009 parents).
You will notice the year 2010 cropping up twice in the above analysis, and as the major element of the autumn run is grilse (even if there are signs of salmon beginning to more prominent), for which the most normal base/parentage year is 2010, that could be good news.
I venture into dangerous territory, having failed O level biology, but the complication for Tweed is that smolts can either spend 1,2 or 3 years in the river before going to sea, with, as I understand it, 2 years the most common, both 1 and 3 less than that (with 1 increasing as global warming and better feeding takes hold).
Whereas springers are normally 2:2s or more rarely 3:2s, making it much easier to predict the parentage year……autumn salmon and grilse cover a much wider spectrum.
In the autumn you can have 1:1s, 1:2s, 2:1s, 2:2s, 2:3s and (even) 2:4s.
In our hut we have a photograph of a 56 lber caught in the Cauld Stream on 7th November 1912 by Mr WH Kidson on a size1 1/2 Sir Richard. It went to sea as a 2 year old smolt and spent over 4 1/2 years in the sea without spawning; it was a 2:4.
The variety of age groups is a huge strength in angling terms for autumn fishing, because whereas the spring is largely dependent on one year (hence 2014 being poor because 2009 was poor)…….the same is absolutely not true for the autumn salmon and grilse which will be coming our way in 2014. They can, and do, come from any of 4 consecutive years.
If you are still with me (I am not!), what, I hear you say again, of autumn 2014?
Well, it will not be a record, for I cannot see how we will ever beat the 2010 figure of 23,219….but it should be ok, because most of the autumn run this year should come from 2010.
If I were talking to my local boatman friend again, I would be braver…but with a wider audience, and humiliation and derision the consequences of getting it badly wrong, this time I will err on the cautious side.
The variables are overwhelming; did they spawn ok in the cold winters of 2010/11 and 2011/2012; has sea survival decreased still further; will there be a drought in September and October, affecting the fish getting in and also the chances of angling success; will November flood endlessly as it can and halt effective fishing early?
The answer, of course, is that we just don’t know and it would be a brave man/a fool who makes any firm prediction.
All this comes in the certain knowledge of a stern ticking off from the biologists for getting my smolt age groups all wrong, and of being blamed when the autumn fishing bombs.
But it might not, and what fun it will be if it doesn’t.
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