news/editorial

28 October 2018 News/Editorial

The Tweed rod catch for last week was 230 salmon and 10 sea trout, making the season’s total to date, within 90% accuracy, 4,535 salmon and 645 sea trout.

As the total staggers up towards 5,000 salmon for the year, nothing can disguise the comparative lack of fish, with most beats seeing little or nothing jumping in any of their pools.

As most of those being caught are coloured, the next decent rise or flood will take them away up-river to spawn, and in the likely absence of many more coming in, the season will effectively close itself by mid November….

... at the the latest.

--00--

It could become known as “doing a Switlyk”.

Let me explain.

So there you are, on your own, just about to land what is clearly a large silver salmon after a prolonged struggle, when your thoughts inevitably turn to “what am I going to do with it?”

You beach it, and find the fly well down its throat, but not bleeding. Unpracticed at getting hooks out, you think, “well I am not sure I can save it anyway, and I’d quite like a bit of smoked salmon”, so you hit it smartly on the head….as you are perfectly entitled to do, there being no restriction on the Tweed from killing salmon post 1st July.

Back to the hut, triumphantly carrying a sealiced 20lb cock autumn salmon, to be met with congratulations from fellow fishers and ghillies alike, photographs are taken, the fish bagged up ready for delivery to a smokehouse.

A photo of the fish, clearly no longer alive, is posted on Tweedbeats Instagram….and almost the first comment to come in is “that fish looks dead”......no doubt shortly to be followed by more of the same.

In anticipation, if not quite of a media storm, then at least plenty of aggrieved adverse commentary, the offending picture of said dead 20 lber was removed from social media for evermore.

Welcome to today’s world of salmon fishing political correctness.

So where to start?

We will all have our own views, my own being that I would not have killed it....for I can no longer recall the last time I killed a salmon that I have caught, but I have been content (just) to dispatch fish caught by others when I was rowing them or ghillieing for them, if they wanted one for the pot...that is so long as it was a cock or small grilse of either sex, for I can never countenance killing, or allowing anyone else to kill, a female salmon of more than about 6lbs.

And of course it would have to be fresh, for all coloured fish go back...what is the point in killing some old coloured fish which will be inedible anyway?

So where does that leave us with that (dead) 20lb cock fish?

Some say that big fish breed more big fish (unproven) and would not have killed it on that basis alone, others that you should not just save the hens because therein lies imbalance between the sexes on the spawning beds....and others too are like me and cannot bring themselves to kill anything, for a multitude of different reasons.

But mainly because I am old and like seeing them swim away, and worry about the paucity of salmon...and, of course, not many dead fish spawn successfully.

And yet, and yet....although our lucky fisherman did nothing wrong in terms of both the law and what the RTC say about killing (or not killing) salmon, our judgement was that, had that photo remained on Instagram, there would have followed a crescendo of criticism... maybe even that fabled media storm.

Looking back now at old photos taken in the 1980s, before anyone considered catch and release, at rows of dead silver fish laid out on the grass with the triumphant anglers standing smiling behind them, is distinctly uncomfortable.

Such scenes now would render those smiling anglers personae non gratae on every salmon river in Scotland, in all likelihood having to go into voluntary exile to lead anything like a normal life again.

Let me give you a tip.

If you do kill a salmon from now on, when you are perfectly entitled to and it is a good silver fish.

don’t tell anyone except your very bestest friends, put it in the freezer before anyone sees it....and most important of all, never publish any “trophy” photographs of its shining corpse...EVER.

Then your life will go along just fine...and that army of piscatorial pc police, of which I am very nearly one, will be spared their apoplectic vitriol, for they will be none the wiser.

Some may thrive on the oxygen of social media; dead fish, and their triumphant captors, do not.

You ask that American huntress, the exotically named Larysa Switlyk, pictured with the wild sheep and goat she had shot on Islay.

She must wish she had kept quiet.

It is the best way.