news/editorial

29 November 2015 News/Editorial

Before trying to draw some (obviously amateur) conclusions for what has happened here on the Tweed in 2014 and 2015, we need some education, some basic understanding, and for that let me take you back.

Some time ago I invested £12 in a 2nd hand book, the erstwhile bible for those interested in the ways of our salmon, WL Calderwood’s “Salmon and Sea Trout” published in 1930.

He wrote it, “having concluded 31 years as Inspector of Salmon Fisheries of Scotland”.

He was the grand fromage in Scottish salmon fisheries management of his day…...and when you read the book, you will see that he knew a thing or two about it.

Not only that, but he wrote it at a time of change, 1930 being just after the last big switch from the summer/ autumn mainly grilse dominated runs of the 19th and early 20th centuries, to the largely spring and salmon dominated mid 1920s to late 1960s.

Indeed he says in relation to the Tweed “ I recollect being told most emphatically 25 years ago that the Tweed had always been a late river, and always would be a late river. Some people are most dogmatic when they speak about fish or religion. I ventured to reply that I saw no reason why Tweed should not be a spring river……..the river now holds good spring runs and has done for several years”.

Underlying his many wise words are two basic truths:

First, that rivers have different “races” of salmon, typically spring salmon, and summer and autumn salmon and grilse. Crucially, he was convinced by years of what he calls “marking” of young salmon, that the children inherit the characteristics of their parents ie a spring salmon will produce more spring salmon, summer/autumn salmon will produce more summer/autumn salmon, and grilse largely produce more grilse, and:

Secondly, that the longer a juvenile salmon spends in the river before going down to the sea as a smolt, the more likely it is to come back early in the year as a springer or early summer salmon eg a juvenile salmon which spends 3 years before smolting is more likely to come back (a) as a salmon and (by) as a springer, especially if its parents were springers.

Intuitively, we can all recognise this in the way that the runs of salmon and grilse on the Tweed for so many years have been predictable, which is what you would expect if children follow the innate characteristics of their parents.

Interestingly, he convinced himself that the innate characteristics hold true regardless of place, so for instance you could take the fertilised eggs/ hatchery produced juveniles of a grilse from one part of the Tweed and put them in a known spring salmon producing area, such as the top of Ettrick, the results would never be springers, just more grilse.

So why is all this relevant to us here, at the end of the 2015 season?

Because something may be changing……. now.

“Why do you think that?” I hear you cry.

Because I have been here for 35 years now (and another 30 years before that on the Tweed, but not here), and the last 5 or 6 years have been distinctly odd, I would argue breaking the pretty consistent mold we have all become used to over that 35 year period.

With one exception….the spring, for I can detect no discernible difference between the springs now and when we came here in 1980, and that is borne out by the catch figures which have been extraordinarily steady not just since 1980, but since the dreadful UDN year of 1967.

Every year Tweed catches between 1,000 and 3,000 springers. There have been no surprises, some worryingly bad years, but never a really good one with a catch of say 6,000 plus for the spring. It has not happened….. or at least not yet.

All this despite, in recent years, no spring netting whatever and 100% catch and release by the rods.

So, quite unlike our revered ex Inspector of Salmon Fisheries, WL Calderwood, who in 1930 could clearly see the increase in spring salmon runs in all rivers, there is no sign whatever of that in the Tweed now, and those who predict we are on the cusp of a return of the spring runs of the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s and early ‘60s, are doing so as a hunch, based on no evidence whatever. They may be right…...but I can see no sign of it, and nor can the catch figures.

Fishers at the Junction (and to a slightly lesser extent the Floors beats) this spring might have thought spring nirvana had arrived with a catch at the Junction of over 300 springers, but that was out of a total of just 2,000 caught over 5 months on the whole Tweed system. The Junction was lucky in that it is a natural place for springers to stop, and stop there they did; most of the rest of us both saw and caught very little.

No, it is not the spring that is changing; it is the autumn.

If you have one year when something happens, it could be a freak. If you have 2 years running when exactly the same thing happens, it begins to look less like a freak, more like a trend.

In both 2014 and 2015, the runs of both late summer and autumn salmon and grilse have been way below normal, and in both years the bulk of the fresh fish had stopped coming in by the end of October. As the previous norm was that 75% of the run was made up of large numbers of grilse, the component that has most obviously been missing in 2014 and 2015 has been those large numbers of grilse.

It has all been very strikingly different to what we have become used to over recent years, even decades, as the strong late autumn run on Tweed has been a constant, dependable in both good times and bad, and the envy of other rivers.

No more, it would seem.

So what is happening?

Well, first, let us agree some sense of proportion. 2014 and 2015 have not been disasters. The rod catch on Tweed for 2014 was 7,767 salmon and grilse. It seems likely that 2015 will be similar, maybe even slightly higher.

The 2014 catch was higher than on any other river, although both the Spey and the Tay in 2015 may have done better than the Tweed, but if so, probably not by much.

So no panic buttons are needed.

My bet is that 2011 is the future; at the time it seemed odd, 1,000s of salmon (not grilse) pouring into the river in early August. I have already regaled you with the 28 caught here on 10th August 2011 by just 2 rods, all on a fly, and only 2 of the 28 were under 8lbs.

They were big salmon, in their 1,000s, coming into the Tweed in early August, and I am not aware of any year in my lifetime when that has happened before.

If you tie that in with the recent grilse decline in 2014 and 2015, and then go along with WL Calderwood’s compelling evidence that “like” begets “like” (not only that but that grilse have far fewer eggs than salmon, and grilse eggs are less robust), then you can well argue that the balance is shifting, indeed has already shifted, in favour of the salmon.

It is, of course, far too early to be sure, and any change from grilse to salmon domination is likely, I am told, to be a rocky path, strewn with pitfalls and diversions….but the direction of travel over time will become clear.

So my bet is for the summer and autumn runs of the future to become dominated by salmon, not grilse, although there could still be good grilse years along the way. And, quite unlike the 1970s and 1980s when summer salmon were scooped up by both our own and the massive high seas and drift net coastal fishery nets, now they would have a clear run into the Tweed once they had avoided those few remaining unacceptable North East drift nets.

So that is it for 2015.

We can only hope and pray for something better in 2016.

And if the future is more summer and autumn salmon, rather than grilse, we have been here before, of course in the autumn (which we can all remember) but even in the summer, if not in any of our lifetimes…...in 1795!, as the words of the 8th Earl of Home enticingly show:.

“In the month of June of that year, 1795, I killed in one week, between the Monday morning and the Saturday night, 82 clean salmon, all in the finest condition, and many of them large fish…...all but two salmon”.

If that isn’t enough, in July he caught and killed a 45lb salmon covered in sea lice.

Something for us all to dream about over the dark mid-winter months, and before this column returns for the new season in February.

Thank you to all those who have stuck with it in 2015.

Happy Christmas.