news/editorial

25 August 2019 News/Editorial

Tweed’s scores last week were (easily) another 2019 record at 393 salmon and 128 sea trout , bringing the season’s (90% accurate) totals to 24th August to 3,149 salmon and 1,556 sea trout.

The weather moved seamlessly from cool and wet to hot and cloudless skies on Friday, with more of the same on Saturday and today Sunday, but will, we are told, be cooling off and becoming unsettled again next Wednesday/Thursday, as we move through the last week of meteorological summer.

With the heat and sun dissipating, and with water levels and temperatures dropping, the fishing next week could become good. With the emphasis on “could”.

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One of the oddities of this year has been that nobody has ever reported seeing any numbers of fish jumping, and yet over 3,000 salmon have been caught, mostlyreleased, so that even at a catch rate of 50% (30% or 40% is more likely) there must now be well over 6,000 salmon somewhere in the river between Berwick and Galashiels/Selkirk.

So where are they?

Not only that, but as the river retreats to a better fishing height after flooding, just when the catch scores should increase, they get worse, and consistent reports are of fewer, rather than more, fish being seen.

It is all a little odd.

And what of the “no netting dividend”, for the first time for decades there being no netting of salmon off the coasts of either England or Scotland? Logically, there must by now, here in late August, be many more salmon in the river than would otherwise have been the case.

And yet, it does not seem like it.

The Spey has been fishing exceptionally well and, traditionally, Tweed salmon runs can peak a month or more after the Spey. Gordon Castle, admittedly 20 rods and eight miles of the lower Spey, caught nearly 200 salmon and grilse the week before last, and the great Spey beats such as Rothes, Delfur and Arndilly are regularly catching 30 to 50/week.

Are we, here on the Tweed, about to see something similar as we go into the early autumn? Logically again, with no nets and other rivers doing better, the answer should be “yes”.

We will know soon enough.