news/editorial

23 September 2018 News/Editorial

The Tweed rod catches last week were 208 salmon and 58 sea trout, taking the cumulative totals to 22nd September 2018 up to 2,923 salmon and 528 sea trout.

Last week was spoiled by three smallish rises in water, all bringing unwelcome colour.

With cooler and drier weather forecast, and with the river settled down, next week will provide the first real test of what sort of fishing autumn is to come.

Pre 2014, next week would mark the first of the best six weeks fishing of the year on the Tweed.

But this is 2018, and it might be the start of something good...but then again it might not.

We will know soon enough.

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There is one question that all fishery experts and scientists have failed to answer...and I include in this professor Jens Christian Holst. You will recall that Professor Holst’s compelling theory is that our grilse are either (a) failing completely and/or (b) becoming ever smaller, all because of the mackerel explosion in the near North Atlantic where our grilse go to feed.

In turn, this is all related to/caused by changes in North Atlantic sea surface temperatures and the Atlantic Multi-Decadal Oscillation, or AMO.

Whereas 2017 was in the category of grilse failing altogether, 2018 is more obviously that we have some grilse, but they are very small....all a result of too intense competition for food in the sea.

But the unanswered question is this.

What is the explanation for the equally obvious lack of fresh (bigger) salmon in the 8lbs to 25lbs category from September to the end of November?

In autumn 2017 we never saw a single fresh proper autumn salmon here after 1st September, an almost unimaginable thing for those of us brought up in the heady autumn days post the 1970s.

Scientists will tell you that by the 2000s, 75% of the big Tweed autumn catches were grilse.....but then 25% were salmon, and that 25% was a pretty big number.

So where have they gone?

We are told these salmon go further afield to feed, as far as Greenland. We have also been told that the numbers of salmon should increase overall (spring, summer and autumn taken together), as the numbers of grilse both decline and become smaller in average weight.

Well, maybe the numbers of summer salmon are increasing (impossible to tell this year because of the drought, although the NE drift net catch when (eventually) released will give a clue)....but where exactly are the autumn salmon and what is the plausible reason for their decline/disappearance?

If you go back 80-100 years, both autumn salmon and grilse numbers declined, just as they are now, but as the grilse numbers declined and became smaller in weight, so the autumn salmon numbers also declined.... but became very much larger in weight.

If you don’t believe me.

In 1935 we caught just 16 salmon here in October, 6 were over 20lbs and the average weight was just under 16lbs. In November we caught just 24 salmon, 10 were over 20 lbs and the average weight was just under 18lbs.

And not one grilse amongst them.

If history is repeating itself, whereas the scientists may have very plausible explanations for what is happening to our grilse, there is not yet much evidence of the salmon becoming more consistently numerous over all three seasons.

And those really big autumn salmon?

There is no sign of them yet, but in a period of great change, those self same scientists would say.... it is early days.

Amid all the too voluble critics of today’s salmon river managers, and the palpable impatience of many, the scientists could well be proved right.

But not quite yet.