news/editorial

28 February 2016 News/Editorial

Keen tweeters (whatever they are) will have noticed that the River Tweed Commission (RTC) released its 2015 Annual Report and Accounts last week.

You can find it on the RTC website at http://www.rtc.org.uk/RTC_2015_Annual_Report.pdf, and well worth reading it is too.

The accountants amongst you might be alarmed at the deficit for 2015 of well over £400,000. Some might rely on the Government’s 3 year moratorium on coastal netting, whereas the RTC, supported by all proprietors, rightly decided not to rely on the vagaries of politics, and future political decision making, and took matters into their own hands and bought the last coastal nets in 2015, thereby ensuring they can never be fished commercially again. Accordingly, the full cost has been written off in the 2015 accounts.

Observers recently arrived from Mars might wonder why we Tweedsiders were so down in the mouth about last season when they see that the salmon catch by rod and line was 8,091, higher than 2014 and yet again, most probably, (I say that because precise figures for the 2015 rod catch for the Tay, Dee and Spey are punishingly hard to find) higher than any other river.

In addition, 2,323 sea trout were caught by the rods, and anybody who knows Tweed sea trout is aware we are not talking finnock here, they average 3 or 4 lbs and it is far from unusual to catch one over 10lbs, even over 15lbs.

My old friend Nigel Houldsworth caught a monster here last year, and they put it down as 16lbs, but boatman Paul Hume says he has never seen a bigger rod caught one, and it could have been anything up to 20lbs. For those with strong constitutions (the picture of Nigel I mean, not the fish), the second picture down on the right of the Lees Tweedbeats page (apologies to other beats for being partisan in this instance) http://www.tweedbeats.com/beats/the_lees shows the scene just after capture.

So why were we so down in the mouth about it all?

Partly because fishing conditions right through the autumn were so awful (mainly drought ridden), partly because the fish themselves seemed to colour up so quickly, but mainly because we have become used to catching almost double the catch of 8,091, and 5 years after the record catch of 2010 and with no netting to speak of, we expected so much more.

More than one experienced boatman has told me that we have become spoilt, that 2014 and 2015 were reality checks, forcing us all to confront the fickleness of wild salmon fishing….that reality is that it is eternally and gloriously uncertain, the conundrum being that whereas we think we would like to catch 10 gleaming sea liced salmon every day we go fishing, in fact it is the certainty that we will not, but that just occasionally we could, which makes it so compelling.

Of the 8,091 salmon caught by the rods, 80% were returned to the water, the highest percentage ever achieved by the Tweed.

It is not for me to congratulate our rods for this, but at a time that some, who should have known better, were telling us that rods killing salmon was a “significant factor” in the decline of salmon, 4 out of every 5 caught being spared to spawn is a great result and example to all. With concern about overall numbers last year and with the effects of the ceaseless winter flooding on the spawning beds, one cannot but think that killing very few and maximising the number of potential spawners can only have been a good thing for the future.

The sun is shining as I write this and after a glorious week of dry, cold winter weather, as winter technically ends and we are in irreversibly upbeat mood, how nice it is to see some salmon being caught…..and what pictures of them there are on the various websites, in the main exemplarily well held not far from the water with one hand on the tail and the other under the chin. Is there anything better in salmon fishing than a sea liced springer?

Some 70 beautiful Tweed springers were caught by the rods, the first week that conditions have been anything like decent.

Tuesday this coming week is the 1st of March, spring, and renewed hope, are in the air.

It is also my dear old father’s birthday, he would have been 96, but died 10 years ago, a remarkable survivor of Changi and 3 years on the Burma Railway between 1942 and 1945.

He later wrote “ I have vivid memories of 1937 as I caught 96 salmon to my own rod in the April school holidays that year. If my sister Rachel had not elected to get married in London on the last day of the holidays, I would have got to 100”.

Sisters!