news/editorial

28 January 2017 News/Editorial

“Hope smiles from the threshold of the year to come, whispering “it will be happier”....”

(Alfred Lord Tennyson)

As we flip into another season/year, from the extraordinary 2016 into 2017, it takes remarkably little to give me hope.

Puppsie and I were walking by the river on Wednesday, 28th December. I made a note of the date.

Puppsie, you will recall, is my Lancashire Heeler. She had Christmas-ed well on leftover turkey and stuffing.

It was a glorious morning, sunny and warm, for December, and we were both intent on walking off our festive excesses.

Over the road we went, alongside the Coldstream golf course, and up to Spylaw Wood where my father and 3 friends shot over 550 pigeons one October afternoon, 60 years ago. In the days of winter stubbles, the pigeon were flighting back from the cut English crop fields on the south side of the river, back to Scotland to roost in the warmer woods belonging to the Hirsel. In a strong westerly that afternoon, they were channeled over 4 hides on the east edge of Spylaw, where the expert marksmen lurked.

Puppsie and I walked along the length of Spylaw, heading west into Dundock, that superlative rhododendron and azalea wood, superlative because it is founded on peat shipped/carted from the Lammermuirs specifically for the purpose, all this in the days when grandees, either my great, or great great, grandfather, did such things…..because they could.

Skirting Dundock and over the road again, now heading briefly south towards Fireburnmill, then east down the river, on the way back home.

The mighty Tweed was still quite mighty, but clear and fining down after storms Barbara and Conon had done their worst.

We were passing the Ferry Stream, one of those great Wark pools, when I both saw and heard a very distinct swirl and the flick of a strong, aggressively mobile tail in the water, slap bang in the middle of the strong current.

Trust me, it was no kelt.

So what was it? A travelling fish, going fast upstream?

On the 28th December 2016?

Was it a herald, a scout for 1000s of its friends, even now waiting out at sea, getting ready to come in earlier than usual, this spring? Is there a mixture of overwintering grilse and normal indigenous springers out there, the numbers swollen beyond recent imagining by the addition of those overwintering grilse, which should have come back in 2016, but did not?

I strongly suspect not, but we fishermen live and thrive…...on hope.

It could be that something as startlingly different will happen in 2017, in a good way, just as something(s) very different, in a bad way, happened in 2014, 2015 and 2016.

All it took for me to start thinking like this, after all the disappointments of the last 3 years…. was that one, sharp, aggressive flick of the tail of a fast swimming fish in late December.

I rather think Puppsie saw it too.

Just the flick of a tail, all over and gone in a second.

I have seen nothing since, despite being by the river almost every day in January. And the Tay is catching very little.

But that flicking tail is all it took to give me hope.

Not much, I know, but all we can do, as a new season begins.……

…...is trust that Alfred Lord Tennyson knew what he was talking about.

--00--

There are five pictures here (and on Instagram) showing what beavers will do if they ever get here; this is the Ericht, a prime tributary of the Tay.

On the firm ground that a few pictures paint a thousand words, I need hardly say anything.

Except, (a) I told you so and (b) that SNH, SWT and those spineless politicians who refused to have them removed from the Tay, after illegal introductions, should be ashamed of themselves.

I suggest two things.

First, we should start an immediate campaign to keep them out of the Tweed valley and, secondly, that those who agreed to this, or allowed it to happen, should pick up the bills for the huge expenses that are coming once beavers spread.

They should pay every time a tree has to be protected with wire, every time a tree is killed or cut down by beavers, every time a dam has to be removed to allow salmon up, every time culverts and drains are blocked, every time flood banks collapse because of burrowing beavers.

The rest of us will have to pick up the pieces for years and years to come.

It is still not too late to get rid of those Tay beavers, but I wouldn’t hold your breath.

Because the same spineless, pro cuddly-beaver politicians are still in charge.