news/editorial

24 April 2016 News/Editorial

Two numbers to talk about this week, first, 9 and, next, 54,969.

Both refer to numbers of salmon caught.

Imagine you had been scheduled to fish at Lower Floors on Friday last week, blank, you would have seen gloomily, on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, with just 1 caught on Thursday, maybe turn up for Friday morning, you think to yourself, and then go home after a good lunch?

Nothing exemplifies why we go fishing, or the extraordinary fickleness of spring fishing in particular, more than what happened on Friday……..they caught 8 by lunchtime, 9 for the day, most, as I understand it, sea-liced.

So what happened on Saturday?

Another blank.

Never has the gillies’ time honoured cry “You should have been here yesterday, Sir!” been

more apt.

The second number, 54,969, was produced last week by MSS (Marine Science Scotland) as the total Scottish salmon rod catch for 2015, of which the Tweed’s share was 8,091, or 15% of the whole.

54,969 sounds a lot, it is better than the 2014 Scottish rod catch of 45,175 (the lowest in living memory), but it is still almost 1/3rd less than the five year average catch……...so better than 2014, but worryingly poor.

It is our custom now to look back at 2010 as the nirvana of recent times in Scottish salmon fishing, the annus mirabilis, when the total Scottish rod catch was 110,496 (more than double the 2015 catch), of which the Tweed’s share was 23,219, or 21% of the whole, and almost 3 times the 2015 Tweed catch.

Of the 4 big rivers, Tweed’s 2015 rod catch of 8,091 was pretty much matched by both the

Tay (7,779) and the Spey (7,728), whereas the Dee (2,558) had an unaccountable, and unwarranted (for it is as well managed a river as any other) shocker.

If the Dee is at one, inexplicable, end of the salmon fortunes for 2015, the smaller northern rivers were, again inexplicably, at the other end, for instance the Naver catching 1,935, far higher than its 10 year average of 1,458, likewise the neighbouring Thurso which caught 1,791 (against its 10 year average of 1,657).

So 2015 presents us with a mixed bag for our rivers, a few very good, some average or below, and the rest pretty poor.

As Andrew Wallace points out in the joint ASFB/RAFTS (Strutt & Parker sponsored) 2016 Report, the concern for us all is that “Scotland has fired its last practical shot in the locker for controlling salmon exploitation, and, like the Bank of England with interest rates, has run out of options to deal with that impact”.

In other words, our consistent response over the last 30 years to decreasing salmon runs has been both to reduce netting (now in 2016 down to negligible amount compared to previous decades) and for the rods themselves to kill little or nothing (84% of the total 2015 catch was released by the rods).

Having done all that, and if salmon runs either do not recover as they should or, worse still, continue to decline, what do we, or, more relevantly, what can we, do next?

“The problems must be in the sea” I hear you cry, because the river environment in most of our rivers is (arguably) more favourable towards smolt survival now (pisciverous birds excepted, perhaps) than it has ever been.

If that assumption is correct, the challenges, so far wholly unsolved, are not only (a) to identify what it is that is going wrong in the sea, but (b) in the ocean vastnesses, on a different scale to the more accessible and benign river environment, can we ever, affordably, influence whatever it is that is going wrong there?

As some bloke in Stratford almost said, over 400 years ago…….

“ in the sea, or not in the sea, that is the question.”