news/editorial

29 April 2018 News/Editorial

In pretty much perfect, at long last, fishing conditions throughout, the catches for last week were 60 salmon and 2 sea trout, making a total (with 90% accuracy) of 370 salmon and 34 sea trout for the year to 28th April 2018.

With two months to go to 30th June, the end of what the Tweed calls “spring fishing”, even if some of the June fish will undoubtedly be of the “summer” variety, the worst spring catch of the last 20 years was 2009 with 1,147 salmon caught by the rods to 30th June.

With the recent trend towards increased summer salmon numbers, we can but hope that May and June prove to be much more productive than their immediate three predecessor months have been.

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More essential reading this week, with the second edition of “The River” from the RTC and TF, this time all about smolt traps and fish counters, as Tweed river managers continue to understand more and more about the numbers of both adult and juvenile salmon.

Perhaps the most eye catching item is the picture of a beautiful fresh springer going through the Ettrick counter, some 50 (river) miles from the sea, on 10th April, which may provide some answer to those who wonder why very little has yet been caught below Coldstream.

Here is the link: http://www.rivertweed.org.uk/news/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/2018-April-The-River-Issue-2.pdf

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Sophocles got it right when, in Sons of Aleus, he said:

“What people believe prevails over the truth”.

Now, being no classics scholar, although possessed of a (rather good) Latin A level, I cannot pretend that the wise old bird’s words were uppermost in my mind as I strolled between the Redden Burn and Wark village between 8am and 9am last Wednesday morning.

My job was to count goosanders and cormorants by walking along the English side of the river. I was but a small cog in the coordinated river-wide wheel that was the quarterly bird count organised by the Tweed Foundation.

But it did occur to my enfeebled half-awake brain, as I progressed, that if I walked the full three miles without counting a single FEB (fish eating bird) there would follow, as night does day, myriad quips about going to specsavers. There would be queues, from here to eternity, of those casting nasturtiums on not just my eyesight, but my probity, my parentage….. and heaven only knows what else.

It was a peerless morning, a fresh breeze and not a cloud in the sky. God was in his heaven, and all was right in my world, with Puppsie (my Lancashire Heeler) by my side. There was a spring in my step….. and, to borrow a phrase, I was feeling in mid season form.

You could spot a goosander at 500 paces with the naked eye, two or three times that with my Godfather’s magnificent Barr & Stroud (British Patent 572537) binoculars.

Well…..I walked the first two miles without the faintest sniff of an FEB; three pairs of geese (pink footed I think, but I can never tell the difference between them and greylag), sand martins aplenty, enough piping oystercatchers to gladden your heart, mallard everywhere, pied wagtails, even some tufted duck….. you name it…. but not a suspicion of an FEB.

The closer I got to Wark Village and journey’s end, the more I came to dread the spectre of a NIL return…...and inevitable ridicule…….and quite possibly that habit of ancient Greeks, when delivered of news they did not like, just like you anti-FEB fundamentalists, of “shooting the messenger.”

Mercifully, the prospect of both public ridicule and a grisly end were relieved somewhat when, opposite Fireburn Mill, three male goosanders got up and flew upstream, and another male scooted along the water.

So my tally was just four and not a cormorant to be seen; and Paul Hume, counting the next three miles down to Coldstream Bridge, also saw four goosanders, and no cormorants.

Our conclusion…….that there are remarkably few goosanders here now, and no cormorants. This may or may not have something to do with the previous, much larger, over-wintering populations of both going off in this ( absurdly cold) mating season, to nest elsewhere.

As the smolt run gathers pace over the next few weeks, from what we saw, or did not see, on Wednesday, those smolts will be unlucky even to see a goosander or cormorant, let alone be eaten by one.

All of which will bring howls of protest from those who blame FEBs for everything.

So back to Sophocles…. and Mark Twain…. supposedly the first to have been on pretty much the same page as that wise old bird, when he said something similar:

“Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.”