news/editorial

23 October 2022 News/Editorial

Forgive me, but there is an uncomfortable feeling, as the end of another season approaches, that there is nothing much new to say. The rains have arrived, a huge low pressure is funneling damp, warm, Putin defeating (in that we do not need much heating on yet) air up from the Bay of Biscay and all points south. The river rises almost every day, poor for the fishing but good for the fish. It was bound to happen, you would say, averages being what they are, in balancing out the neverending drought of summer.

This massive swirl of humid, wet air shows no sign of moving, so that next week will be more of the same, so say our latter day Michael Fish-es, frustrating for anglers, wanting things to calm down for a last throw of the dice before the salmon fishing stumps are drawn.

There is an all too obvious pattern, it has been so for some years now, perhaps even since most of the nets came off below Coldstream in 1987. It only applies in drought summers. The late spring and summer fish come in past Berwick but never move above Coldstream, or at least not until the first of the autumn floods arrive, and even then they are loathe to go. When they do, they head straight for Galashiels and beyond, almost without stopping.

In simple terms, beats between Carham and Dryburgh, the cream of middleTweed fishing, miss out. I am told that, of late, not only have they caught very little, they see nothing. In a “normal” year of steady water flows right through the summer, there is no such log jam below Coldstream and the fish progress upstream in a more or less orderly fashion, as and when they want. This allows all middle Tweed beats to fish for an ever moving population right through the summer and early autumn. Just look at the summer months results for say Upper Floors, Rutherford and Middle Mertoun in 2019 and 2020, the only non drought years of the last five, as compared to 2018, 2021 and 2022, and you will see what I mean.

The absence of many (some would say any) autumn fresh fish makes the Tweed just like other rivers, nothing wrong with that, but very prone to summer weather conditions. Pre 2014 we scoffed at summer droughts, secure in the knowledge of a massive autumn run of silver salmon to come, exemplified most by November being often the second best month after October. Now many beats hardly fish in November.

Things change and in nature we have no option but to change with them. With that narrowing of Tweed’s salmon runs, it doesn’t half make you appreciate how important the spring run is, and that looking after our springers is perhaps the most important thing, both in conservation terms and commercially, in extending the season from February to June when the summer fish start to arrive.

There is no real sign of it yet, but if we are in a salmon, as opposed to grilse cycle, the real prize would be if not just summer salmon increased in numbers, but so do their spring cousins. It would take us back to the 1920s to 1960s.

Who knows, stranger things have happened.