29 July 2018 News/Editorial
As the Tweed rod catch last week sank to negligible numbers (25 salmon and 7 sea trout) amid humidity and heat, I hear tell that a NE drift netsman from Blyth has had the best day’s netting he has ever had….not just this year, but ever.
He is, of course, perfectly entitled to catch and kill as many salmon as he can…..but it sticks in the throat of those rivers, 75% Scottish rivers, whose fish they are, and who produce those fish, who will never see those fish return and will not receive, and never have received, any compensation from the netsmen or from the EA (who issue the licences) for killing our fish.
The EA said it would stop in 2018, but failed. They now say it will stop at the end of 2018.
But will it?
It is an outrage, at a time when the Greenlanders and Faroese have signed agreements with NASF, ASF and NASCO not to operate any commercial interceptory salmon netting or any other salmon fisheries, that England still allows indiscriminate drift netting and T&J netting off its NE coast.
Scottish rivers have had their salmon taken from under their noses by English NE drift and coastal netsmen for far far too long.
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Meanwhile, with a little water coming down both Ettrick and Teviot, and with more showers and less heat to come in the week ahead, the fishing should improve for the lowest beats at least.
I hear they have some fish from Tillmouth down to Horncliffe, but those fish were understandably not keen to take anything with the water temperatures consistently in the range 62F in the mornings to 76F by the afternoon.
The air temperature on Friday afternoon was 31c as I drove through Birgham; no salmon will take anything in that.
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Let us go to another world, another time…..and another mindset where the salmon world is not beset by endless troubles.
It is 2019.
The Tweed Gardo net, the only commercial net remaining on the river, can only start killing salmon on 1st June 2019, following the change of close time, extended from 31st March to 31st May.
The North East Drift Net Fishery and the Northumbrian T&J nets, regular (declared) killers of 9,000 to 20,000 salmon pa in recent summers, up to 75% of which are Scottish, intercepted as they are heading for home, have not had their licenses renewed. All drift net fisheries were closed from the end of the 2018 season, and the T&J coastal nets are prohibited from killing salmon in 2019.
And then there is the weather.
2019 will be a normal summer.
Instead of the less than the 3 inches of rain for May, June and July in 2018, there will be the long term average of over 7 inches for those same months in 2019…..and both water and air temperatures will be normal, not the near boiling temperatures of 2018.
What of those goosanders and cormorants.
Following trials on avian predation on other rivers, and the cormorant flock devastation of native brown trout stocks throughout the lower half of the Tweed which became evident in 2018, the River Tweed Commission has been given many more draconian powers to control bird predation within the river corridor….. especially in relation to those large overwintering cormorant flocks.
From where we are now, here at the end of July in 2018, drought ridden for 3 months, water temperatures in the range 65F to 75F almost every day, after a poor autumn in 2017 and a worse spring in 2018…..you could be forgiven for thinking it is all impossible.
That it will never happen.
But it could………...or at least most of it.
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If this drought were to continue long term, say well into October, without a proper flood, some think our salmon will give up trying to come in now, and try again next year instead.
No, they will not.
They are biologically programmed to spawn this year, therefore they have no option but to continue the long wait in the sea until it floods…..or their patience runs out.
Those who remember 2003, and the summer levels right through to the end of October, know this to be true.
At some point, regardless of water conditions, they have to come in.
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