24 February 2019 News/Editorial
The Tweed salmon catch for last week was 25, making 58 for the season so far to 23rd February 2019.
With only 4 days fishing left in February, the total will struggle to get anywhere near to 100 as compared to a 5 year average closer to 150. So no sign yet of any improvement in numbers for 2019, over 2018.
But, of course, it is far too early in the year to draw any conclusions about anything.
As for the weather forecast, it is to be the polar opposite of the “beast from the east” week that we had this time last year. For the most part it will be dry, sunny and warm, although beginning to break down as we get to next weekend.
Fishing conditions will be perfect.
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If I have a cast next week it will be with a floating line. It has always been an (faintly ridiculous, admittedly) ambition to catch salmon on a floating line (not even the suggestion of a sinking tip) in both November and February.
With the weather as it is, and with a dropping water predicted for the week, there must be a chance.
The entry for 1st November 2003 in my fishing book says “Temple Pool, Ally Shrimp, 5 salmon weights 19,12,12,10,8 lbs, 43F and very cold all day, water height 7” and caught wading in the Temple, 4 more pulls, all on floating line in November (!), the 19lber rose at it, 4 others caught in the day, all on floaters”.
If you hear nothing next week, assume the attempt ended in abject and humiliating failure
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News in my Times newspaper yesterday that Namibia’s (and Africa’s) last remaining herd of wild horses may be doomed to extinction. Unusually, it is not man’s actions that are the cause, but man’s deliberate, and misguided, inactions.
Namibia had a ”non intervention” policy in its national reserves, in other words, let nature get on with it. Since 2013 not one young foal from the wild horse herd has survived, and last year all the 23 young foals born were killed by hyenas.
It may be too late, but at last rangers are targeting some of the hyena pack to try to protect the young horses. To illustrate the point, the Times pictured one young foal standing alongside its mother; all very idyllic until you notice the foal has a gash in its side with a flap of loose skin hanging, having (just) survived a hyena attack.
Am I alone in seeing parallels with the unforeseen effects of the success of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, in that protection of birds that hunt has led to such proliferation that it is now their prey, not the hunters, who are at existential risk?
Many would argue we have reached that point with our fish, and the birds which eat them.
I exaggerate?
Over the last few late autumns, winters and early springs, having witnessed flocks of cormorants and goosanders (20 to 100 birds) fishing in packs in our great Temple Pool, once a haven for trout of all sizes and masses of them, I seriously doubt if it now holds more than a handful in all its 500 metre length.
A trout fishing duffer, even I used to go out after a flood with my dry fly and catch as many brown trout as I wanted, averaging maybe 1lb, some well over 2lbs, and killed none of them. In 2018 I never caught one, hardly saw a trout rise despite the beautiful summer evenings. More relevantly, others, non-duffers, suffered a similar fate.
Our wild trout have been eaten by those packs of cormorants especially and anyone who says otherwise does not know what they are talking about. Maybe not endangered quite like those wild horses in Namibia, but the principle is the same. If you leave it all up to nature, the hunter, the top of its particular food chain, will prevail.
It is not the cormorants and goosanders that are to blame, they are just doing what they do best.
They have no concept of conservation. The opposite is true, unless we stop them they will go on eating in a particular pool, or pools, until there is nothing left.
We humans are to blame. We are sitting back and doing too little, because we are constrained by the law, just like those Namibian rangers were... until now. We urgently need to protect our fish much better than we have been able for the last few years. Sadly, it is already too late for those magnificent wild brown trout in our Temple Pool and many other pools like it, but not for their successors.
If, and only if, we can get our act together, and come up with an effective plan.
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