25 July 2021 News/Editorial
With apologies to loyal and long suffering readers, I find myself embarrassed for lack of anything worth saying. “Not again” I hear you cry. I am becalmed, in the doldrums, and content that, unlike my brother, I have not spent last week in Northern Ireland where temperatures exceeded 30F every day and all records were broken
The Tweed’s river edges are green, the level becomes ever lower as it continues to rain in England but never here. I have just watched Stephen Dodd winning the Seniors Open at Sunningdale with the aid of his umbrella, and all I could think was “why not here?” At least next week promises both cooler and more unsettled conditions, so the fish in the river might survive. Seven salmon died, presumably stress/heat related, at Lower Pavilion last week, and in many ways it would be surprising if there were, unseen maybe, no more.
Rule of thumb is that upper 70sF can be borne, once the water gets to 80F it could be carnage, for both adult and juvenile fish; a warning for the future when, we are told, temperatures will certainly and routinely exceed what we have experienced last week. Malcolm recorded 76F as the highest here, but it could well have been more than that late in the afternoons. Perilously close, you would think, to intolerable for those cold water loving salmon, especially when you take account of potentially large water abstractions, via irrigators, reducing further the quantity of water.
If 25 salmon were caught riverwide last week, that would be about the size of it. Bad as a likely total month catch of under 200 might seem, we have all forgotten that July 2014 produced 171 and July 2018 just 253, but of course here in 2021 we have (wrongly?) convinced ourselves that, after last year, the summer is the future. Ah, the disappointment of heightened expectations.
The forecasts do not predict anything approaching the 2 to 3 inches of rain, over a day or two, which is what is required to raise water levels and wash out the accumulated murk and muck.
As ever, both I and they may be wrong. Let’s hope so.
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