22 September 2019 News/Editorial
As predicted, in the absence of many fresh fish, the Indian summer brought bright sun, heat and falling water levels, combining to pretty much kill the fishing last week. The scores were 190 salmon and 16 sea trout, making the sums for the season to date 4,345 salmon and 1,676 sea trout.
As Indian summers go, it has been a short one, and the weather will crack up next week. Rain and thunderstorms could rise water levels, as it becomes ever cooler and breezier towards next weekend. Whereas all of this will tend to make the older river fish take again, and might encourage something fresher in from the sea, it is not at all clear that anything very exciting will happen even when we have more favourable fishing conditions.
But you never quite know. There is always hope
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Can we take some comfort from what has been happening on other Scottish rivers? The lower beats of the Spey have done well, Park on the Dee had 12 one day last week and of course the Thurso, right up north, was doing exceptionally well until the Indian summer struck it as well.
The Tweed is a later river than all of them, so it is just possible that some surprises await us next week and into October, if we are to mirror what other rivers have done late on in their seasons. Through it all, I am dogged by one question that nobody has even begun to answer satisfactorily. If we accept that the Tweed grilse are in decline and the balance is switching in favour of our 2SW salmon (I don’t, but bear with me), why is it that the spring and summer 2SW salmon on the Tweed have held up well, but our autumn 2SW salmon have disappeared in exactly the same way as our autumn grilse? You see, nobody has an answer.
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Meanwhile, concerning news from the Tyne’s Riding Mill counter, the worst August upstream migration since 1966 (when there were drift and other nets galore). All this despite plenty of water to encourage movement, and despite there being no netting at all, of salmon, off the northeast coast for the first time for decades. I am not sure what to make of it. Last year 9,123 salmon and sea trout went through the counter in August. This year it was just 2,128.
Here is the link https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/832613/Tyne_monthly_counts.pdf
The optimists will say they are going to come later in September and October; the pessimists, or maybe just realists, see it rather differently. At any event, it all chimes with what has happened here this summer. There have been many fewer salmon and grilse than we would expect, so far. Even before that much heralded, on these pages and elsewhere, “no North East coast netting dividend”.
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There is something faintly melancholy in arriving in a foreign, normally sunny, land to find it shrouded in cloud and mist. Our charming Algarvian taxi driver said they had had no rain at all for 6 months, so that every little drop of rain was welcome.
Not so for the horde of British tourists who come here for sun, more sun, and some golf. Normal service has been resumed today and the predictions for the rest of the week would make keen salmon fishers weep, just what we had at home last week but with a few more degrees of heat added in. Which will be perfect for us, a last blast of vitamin D before the northern equinox hits, our sunlight departs and we have to rely on supplements for our necessary quota of the good stuff. .
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