22 November 2015 News/Editorial
If you had asked 100 Tweed anglers where the fish would be caught on Saturday, the first properly fishable day after 2 weeks of floods, all 100 would have said “in Upper Tweed, above Galashiels”.
In fact, not one was caught there. Even odder, 9, out of the paltry 13 total catch, were caught at the Wark beats, near Coldstream.
Why?
Because they have all gone, gone to spawn, up into the streams and burns beyond Peebles, way above capture by frustrated anglers.
I will leave for next week, in summing up the 2015 season, the possible implications of this…….”this” being both (a) the very early spawning and (b) for the second year, the all too obvious absence of salmon coming into the river after the end of October.
For now, I want to talk about netting, specifically the remaining net fishery off the Northumbrian coast and its continuing effect on the Tweed..
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You can prove anything with figures, but some are unambiguously revealing, no matter how you spin them.
In August 2015, the Environment Agency published the England and Wales salmon catch figures for 2014.
By way of background, the total rod catch for 2014 in England and Wales (70+ rivers) was 10,307 salmon, of which the rods killed 2,315 (22%).
The Tweed (on its own), all classed as Scottish, rod catch for 2014 was 7,767, of which the rods killed 1,787 (23%).
The total net catch for England and Wales for 2014 was 11,976, of which they of course killed……. 11,976.
The truly shocking thing for Tweed and other east coast rivers, from the Tyne northwards, well into Scotland, is that of these 11,976 over 83% (9,985 salmon, 6481 by just 12 drift netsmen, and 3,504 by 25 T&J nets)) were caught and killed in that short area of the Northumbrian coast from around the Tyne northwards to the southern margin of the Tweed Box (deemed to be Scottish) at Holy Island……….which means that in the whole of the rest of the vast 100s of miles of coastline of England and Wales, just under 2,000 salmon were caught and killed by the nets.
It does not take a genius to work out why this is so, the Tyne being the most prolific river in England and Wales, and the Tweed the most prolific in Scotland, so netting around the Tyne and between the Tyne and Tweed makes a lot of sense to commercial netsmen……..but none at all to the Tweed and other Scottish east coast rivers, where up to 75% of those caught (and killed) are headed.
This destruction of Scottish fish by the EA licenced English north east drift and T&J nets has been going on for years, is acknowledged (by the EA re both drift and T&J nets) to be mixed stock/ interceptory and predating mainly on Scottish fish, which neither the EA nor their netsmen pay anything towards producing.
That this continuing sore is being phased out over the next 7 years for the drift nets (though not for the T&J nets, which are also interceptory/mixed stock) is little comfort in years such as 2014 and 2015 when there have been so few salmon.
To sum up.
In 2014, just 37 Northumbrian drift and T&J net licencees killed 9.985 salmon off the Northumbrian coast, and a handful of Tweed nets killed 2,204 salmon, making 12,189 killed in total by nets.
In 2014, the 1,000s of rod anglers on the Tyne, the Aln, the Coquet and the Tweed (the same geographic area as the Northumbrian and Tweed netsmen) caught 10,773 salmon (Tweed 7,767, Tyne 2,694, Coquet 292 and Aln 20) between them, and killed just 2,592.
However you spin those figures, in conservation terms, it doesn’t look good for the very few netsmen, in killing so many salmon, and, crucially, of indeterminate origin, when compared to the 1,000s of rod anglers.
Tweed owners have, since 2014, bought almost all the few remaining Tweed nets, and the Scottish Government is now proposing a 3 year cessation of all Scottish interceptory/mixed stock nets.
No better time, it would seem, for the UK Government and the Environment Agency to follow the lead given by Tweed owners and the Scottish Government and bring to an end, without further delay, the unacceptable interceptory and mixed stock Northumbrian and Yorkshire net fisheries.
Will the EA persist with licencing the only drift netting fishery remaining off the coasts of the British Isles and Ireland for a further 7 long years until September 2022, and the indiscriminate killing by then of (probably) a further 70,000-100,000 salmon by those Northumbrian drift and T&J nets?
It would seem inconceivable……..but they might.
Oh, I nearly forgot, those same Northumbrian nets in 2014 caught and killed just 29,875 sea trout of the staggering 46,116 sea trout total of the North East fishery (Northumbria and North East Yorkshire together).
How many of those, you might well ask, were also headed for the Tweed?
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