news/editorial

23 February 2020 News/Editorial

In the brief moment when the river was just about fishable last week, Upper Floors caught one, the only one, as gales, deluges and consequent flooding continued unabated.

There are beginning to be murmurings (nothing very definite) in the longer range forecasts of something more like high pressure, and of a gradual settling down as we go further into, as late as the middle of, March. February has been, and continues to be, a shocker. March might eventually provide a small ray of hope, meteorological winter will be over, or as one wise old bird once said:

“ If I can just get through March, I usually find I live till the end of the year.”

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Tweed’s salmon rod catch for 2019 has been declared by the RTC (https://www.rivertweed.org.uk/news/?p=6658) at 6,382 (2018: 5,644), an improvement, as expected, wholly attributable to the better fishing conditions in the summer months (June, July and August) when 2,542 salmon were caught as opposed to the 1,677 catch that was the heat and drought of summer 2018.

The sea trout rod catch for 2019 was 2,176 (2018: 817), a very substantial increase, and with many more undeclared caught by trout fishermen, there was clearly an improved run, as well as those better water conditions, when compared to 2018.

The salmon catch, as ever, will attract the headlines. What to make of it? Most worrying is the paucity of fish despite the North East drift net closure in 2019. This lack is evidenced by the catch figures for our only net, Gardo. It caught just 336 salmon and grilse (2018: 485) and for the first time for decades, even centuries, nobody was netting salmon off the Northumberland coast, intercepting our salmon before they could reach Berwick harbour.

Concerningly, further analysis shows that the 7,000 6 year average post 2013 is made up of two distinct parts. Whereas in the first 3 years post 2013, the average was around 7,850, for the last 3 years (2017, 2018 and 2019) that, already low, average has fallen further to just 6,200. In other words, far from catches improving, and despite such things as the high seas netting removals, they have become worse.

Just as nobody saw the sudden decline happening in 2014, nobody would now bet on it coming right in 2020. You never know, stranger things have happened.

But the smart money is on it taking longer.

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Tweed rods in 2019 released back into the river 86% of what they caught. Good, you would say, and it is.

There are, nonetheless, two curiosities about this. First, is it still appropriate for the rods to be killing up to 900 salmon (14% of 6,382) in 2019, far more than any nets kill? In other words, the rods have now become by far the biggest predators of our adult fish. Some might argue that that does not sit well with nets having given up their livelihoods, whilst their main critics, the rods, carry on killing salmon as before.

Secondly, how odd is it that there are no restrictions on killing our late running autumn fish when they have become the weakest component, weaker even than our springers?

There are no easy answers here, individual views will be many and varied. Nobody has, or will have, a monopoly of wisdom, but there is something just slightly uncomfortable about it.