29 March 2020 News/Editorial
Quite a lot to get through this week, but then you have nothing else to do, so here goes.
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Tweed’s salmon fishing letting operation, which was just about alive on Monday last week, very quickly became temporarily extinct by Tuesday after the PM’s lockdown speech on Monday evening.
Quite rightly, as the virus spread, the risks to ghillies and anglers alike, which had already become borderline (however hard you try, you can nearly but not quite get two meters away from each other in the boat, or indeed in many huts), became unacceptably high. In addition, with restrictions on permitted reasons for travel, with pubs, hotels, B&Bs, self catering accommodation and restaurants shutting, not only could visiting anglers not justify coming here, they would have nowhere to stay when they arrive.
So by Tuesday morning, the river’s fishing letting activity had completely ceased, bar the odd straggler who quickly accepted the inevitable shortly thereafter.
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Proprietors, like everyone else, have been struggling to know how to react. Uncertainties abound, foremost of these, how long will this go on?
I can only report what we have done here.
We have asked our two ghillies, Malcolm and Paul, to go into furlough until further notice. They have willingly and generously agreed to this, given the circumstances. As I understand it, this means that they must not perform any of the duties of their employment until the furlough ends; employers like us should be able to claim 80% of their monthly salaries in due course.
We have written to all late March and April 2020 tenants, whose fishing has been removed by HMG’s lockdown, asking them either to reschedule their bookings until similar dates in 2021, or to seek repayment via their own travel insurance. The great majority have accepted this and have been extraordinarily generous in so doing. For those who could not claim on insurance, or could not reschedule to 2021 for personal reasons, we will repay in full.
The chances are that we will be making similar offers to our May tenants in due course, and quite possibly for June and beyond. The smart money is on end-June before things ease up to the point we might be able to fish again, albeit even then with a continuing degree of strict social distancing.
Potentially, but wholly dependent on when things start to ease, proprietors, like so many others much less able than them to withstand such a shock, could lose a significant part of a whole year's income. While accepting that Tweed proprietors as a bunch are hardly the most deprived in the land, that is not a happy prospect. With HMG stepping in to help with ghillies’ salary costs, the other major cost is the RTC’s annual levy (good timing, it becomes payable right now). One hopes that the RTC, depending on how long this goes on, will either issue some form of rebate or restrict the 2021 levy in due course. The level of assessment was agreed at the AGM barely a month, although it seems like years, ago.
Had we all known then what we know now, I would hazard a guess that a very much lower total Tweed assessment figure for 2020 would have been agreed.
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The RTC burst into print on the 25th March with these words “Until such time as coronavirus is under control and subject to any clarification issued by the Governments, we should accept that fishing as an activity is not possible”. This caused something of a “stuchie” (for our southern friends the words “fuss” or palaver” might be more recognisable), partly at least because this was issued without any consultation with Tweed owners who actually run and manage their own salmon fishing, added to which almost all owners had by the 25th shut their beats to commercial letting operations anyway. Moreover, it is not clear that the RTC had any authority to make such a proscriptive statement; they do, of course, police many things on the river by statute, but not, I would guess, coronavirus compliance.
The reason for the stuchie, and a number of owners have raised this, is that many of Tweed’s owners live right on the river bank, do not have to get into a car to get to the river, do not have to stay in a pub or hotel, and only have to walk to the end of their gardens to fish, quite reasonably, they say, as their single exercise, outside their house, for the day. As salmon fishing like this involves meeting, probably even seeing, nobody else, some owners, living on the riverbank, have objected to RTC’s “fishing as an activity is not possible”.
Both in terms of legalities and whether the RTC should or should not be saying this either at all or without reference to their constituents, many would say is a moot point and definitely beyond my paygrade. I am not fishing (I have a sore neck anyway after trying briefly on Tuesday evening, so it is a relief for the temptation to be removed) and nor is anyone else here, but I had some sympathy for that small band of owners who take a different view when it comes to being told by the RTC what they can and cannot do at the bottom of their gardens.
We have one of the Coldstream footpaths going through our garden, and there is a constant stream of walkers taking their allotted exercise, completely in accordance with the rules. And very welcome they are too, all strictly keeping well over two metres (who can blame them?) away from me, as I strive to keep the place tidy.
And yet, and yet, were I to potter down to the Ledges of an evening, for a contemplative cast, I would be 100 yards from my front door, I would see nobody, and I would both be self isolating/social distancing in the river and taking my daily exercise.
But, and perhaps the nub of the matter, regardless of logic, whatever I and other owners think of our own personal circumstances about whether we are allowed to fish or not, may not be the point. Some say an example has to be set in these extraordinary times, and, arguably, it would not look good in a national crisis if some proprietors were the only people still fishing on the river, whether the rules permit it or not. And, of course, proprietors going on fishing could annoy the Government, and you have to ask if that is a sensible thing to do, given that salmon and salmon fisheries are at historically low ebbs right now, and may well need all the help they can get from Government and its agencies in the weeks, months and years to come.
My own view? Now that would be telling. I have given the arguments for and against.
And finally, the overseeing body of Scottish salmon rivers, Fisheries Management Scotland, should perhaps have the last word, as follows:
“We have received a number of enquiries as to whether fishing is included in the Government’s list of exercises permitted during the lockdown, or indeed whether all fishing should cease. The approach adopted by the UK and Scottish Governments is designed to prevent the spread of the virus, supporting and sustaining the NHS, and ultimately saving lives. https://www.gov.scot/news/effective-lockdown-to-be-introduced/.Ultimately, it is for individual proprietors to determine whether fishing can take place in accordance with the latest announcements. However, we do not consider that fishing is an essential activity, and, in most cases, it requires a degree of travel which could not be considered essential. It is our view that the fisheries management and angling communities should play a full part in this greater societal commitment, and therefore it is the strong recommendation of Fisheries Management Scotland that we should refrain from fishing during the lockdown period. We will review this position in three weeks’ time as the Government position is reviewed.”
In other words, those who can just walk to the river to fish possibly can do so legally, but please, like everyone else, don’t.
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Talking of fish and salmon fishing is trivial when so many people are ill and dying of this terrible bug.
Accordingly, the normal round up of last week will confine itself to the 8 salmon caught by the Junction on Monday, as the river finally dropped to a good height after two months of floods. Not only that, but other beats have reported seeing salmon jumping, and we are seeing some here, which we almost never did in Spring 2019. Need one say, the river is perfect and likely to remain so for some time, as a near record high pressure rules.
We all thought that after the last few years, the sport we love could not get worse on the river. Despite there quite probably being more fish than in 2019, things have just become as bad as they could be, in a way we could never have imagined only a few weeks ago.
So, please all take care and keep safe until we get to the other end of this, and life can return to something like, although probably never again quite like, normal.
This bloggy thing will keep going during this fallow period, if only because loyal readers, in their varying degrees of both excruciating and intense boredom, may look forward, in their desperation, every Sunday evening to having some annoying and opinionated jerk giving it large in print.
Au revoir.
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