28 July 2024 News/Editorial
The opportunity seldom arises for an unqualified upbeat report. This is one such. The online scoring last week via Tweedbeats and Fishtweed, if the old abacus is in mid-season form, was 261 salmon and 46 sea trout. Add to that all the non online reporters (eg Lennel alone had 11 on Saturday), whereas the previous best week, 2 weeks ago, might have exceeded 250 salmon, it would be surprising if the real score last week was any less than 350 salmon, by a distance the best of the year.
Some are relaxed about Tweed never showing an accurate weekly catch, still true despite the existence of the Catches page on rivertweed.org. In time, hopefully, it will report a full accurate river catch. Meanwhile, it remains a pity that, if you are going to show figures at all, they are incomplete, ergo always wrong. Too often, quoted elsewhere, is just the Fishtweed figure, last week 191 salmon, as the full river catch, whereas in reality that is seldom more than about 60% of the total.
Perhaps it doesn’t matter, but the too obvious perception is that eg the Tay with 216 salmon last week, a much fuller record of beat catches than the Tweed’s, caught more than the Tweed at 191 salmon, whereas the truth is that Tweed’s catch was 350+ salmon.
We seem to be caught somewhere between the Tay and the Dee, which record much fuller catches on their Fishpal sites, and the Spey, which records almost nothing. Maybe someday it will change, but for now we are stuck in no man’s land, in between.
As for next week, there is today (Sunday) another few inches of water in the lower river from the Teviot, after Saturday’s localised thunderstorms. Reports of masses of salmon/grilse running in off the tides are encouraging. The immediate weather looks like producing summer, for the first time this year. It may not be prolonged, but could heat up the water and put the fish off taking, especially if the sun blazes down. By next weekend, it seems, if you believe the medium term prognosticators, normal service, in terms of this cool and showery summer, may be resumed.
The forecasters and the general British public will bemoan this continuing, if it does continue, dreary summer. We salmon anglers will not.
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No stranger to diving in with both feet, along with the 100% catch and release debate, goes the treatment of fish you put back, both subjects capable of engendering not a little controversy.
Ideally, for a salmon to be released with minimum harm, it should not be removed from the water, at all. That is an absolute, no argument, for any removal from the water causes breathing stress and physical trauma, the longer out of the water the greater the stress/damage. Most would also agree that the warmer the water, the greater the chances of damage and difficult recovery.
Enter the ubiquitous photo via the iPhone or equivalent. Whereas on the one hand, you would think it wholly reasonable that an angler should be entitled to a memory, on iPhone photo album, of the salmon he/she catches. Too often, some say, that involves the fish being removed from the river in order to take a better picture. Unsaid, and unseen, on every such picture, is the amount of time the poor fish is left gasping, the equivalent of we humans being held forcibly underwater. Don’t you wonder, when you see those photos, how long has it been out of the water? We have all done it in the past, but should we?
Is 2 seconds acceptable, what about 5 seconds, even 10 or 20 seconds, or longer, once mobile phones are dropped, focussed, faces are re-arranged in smiling pose, etc etc, all long before the taker goes “snap”?
The purist would say (a) no photos at all and (b) never, ever take the fish out of the water. The latter (b) is easier said than done, if you are in a boat and cannot get out of it to land a salmon eg our Temple wall, you have to net it from the boat and then bring it into the boat, in the net, to unhook it. Even if wading with a nice gravel landing place, if the fish is deep hooked, you almost have to take its face out of the water to see what you are doing in order to release the hook, with minimum damage, while the fish is thrashing around in the shallows, no easy task. We are probably all guilty of having been ham-fisted about securing the unhooking done quickly, and the fish back in the water asap.
So what to do?
If 100% catch and release becomes the norm, as it almost is already, expect some much firmer advice and protocols about unhooking, photos etc. It might also be that angling magazines and websites, such as this, should stop producing any photographs of fish caught, unless the fish is still in, or just under, the water. Salmon held two or three feet out of/above the water, as they routinely are now, may become verboten.
“Spoilsport” I hear you say. But the silent majority, the fish, will be pleased, suffer less and survive to spawn more.
I told you it was controversial.
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My elder son, Richard, and I, as ghillie, went fishing yesterday evening. We caught nothing, ghillie error, but it was a rare, perfect, sunlit, calm and warm interlude, or as PG Wodehouse would have said:
“It was one of those still evenings in the summer, when you can hear a snail clear its throat a mile away.”