news/editorial

2 August 2015 News/Editorial

As we arrive at the end of July, those of us with a piscatorial bent begin to perk up.

It would seem that the Scottish summer droughts of the last 2 years have been avoided, and our rivers have some water, with the forecast for August indicating that the jetstream will continue to pile in low pressures, to the top half of the UK at least.

So what of Tweed salmon catch numbers so far in 2015?

Despite an unfortunate and misguided comment in the Government’s online kill licence forum (now closed), where somebody surmised that Tweed catches are well below par (he has been looking at Fishtweed only it would seem, a most regrettable mistake), my much more accurate assessment is that we are just about bang on average for 2015 so far.

It is all to play for, and the piscatorial perkiness justified because the next 4 months are when 80% of Tweed salmon are caught (we hope).

Confidence is high, and we pray that 2015 will not repeat the damp squib that was 2014.

That online forum and the comments made by the public displayed little enthusiasm for the whole kill licensing thing, many, quite rightly, saying that if you set out to tackle what is wrong with Scottish salmon, salmon anglers killing too many fish, which they don’t, would hardly appear on the list.

Yet it is where the Government has chosen to go, for reasons one can only guess at.

If you gave me carte blanche to sort it all out, this is where I would go:

1. All sea based salmon farms would have 5-10 years to go onshore, into close containment.

2. All netting would cease, again over 5 -10 years, with compensation available on a reducing sliding scale over the 10 years (give up now, full compensation at market value, give up in 10 years, nothing). The “right to fish by net” would be removed as a heritable right in Scotland, leaving the only right to fish with rod and line

3. Goosanders and cormorants within the river environment would no longer be protected between 15th March and 15th May, during the main smolt migration.

4. Seals would not be protected above a certain point in each river.

5. Rod anglers would be prohibited from killing any salmon before 30th June, and only male salmon or female grilse under 5lbs after that.

6. Individual beats, associations and whole rivers would commit their anglers to killing no more than 1 in 5 salmon and grilse after 1st July, and would be responsible for putting in place robust local monitoring systems to achieve that (no quotas or tags).

7. An affordable, measurable and practicable research programme would be developed to identify what, if anything, can be done to improve smolt sea survival and the numbers of returning adults.

8. Every river would commit to a rolling 5 year river management and monitoring plan, in line with already published best practice.

9. Funding would come from proprietors, very much as now, but supplemented by an annual rod licence on salmon anglers only, all of which should go to the less well funded rivers.

Now, I would not expect readers to agree with all of this, but at the very least it is a serious agenda for dealing with the problems.

Whatever it was that motivated the conclusions of Andrew Thin’s Wild Fisheries Review, it certainly was not a desire to deal effectively with the real issues.

Anglers, in his eyes, and it would seem in the eyes of the Government, are part of the problem, or why else would you seek to control, in a most clumsy and unnecessary way, the very few, and reducing, numbers of salmon they kill?

I believe that anglers are the solution, as they have been for at least 30 years now, not the problem.

Do you wonder that they are so offended by all this when it is they and not the Government who have done so much, voluntarily and without any legal compulsion, to save our salmon?

Starting as far back as the mid 1980s, the River Tweed Commission together with the Tweed Foundation set about (in no particular order, largely coterminously):

1. Reducing the numbers of salmon killed by all means, initially by buying out nets on a willing buyer/seller basis; in 1987 alone 20 (out of 40) nets were bought at a cost of £750,000 financed by the top 32 beats. Since then all remaining nets have been bought and the northeast drift netting reduced at cost to the Tweed proprietors of a further £1.25- £1.5 million. Since the 1990s, this has been supplemented by voluntary 100% restrictions on rods killing salmon up to 30th June, and encouragement of good practise after that, so that now less than 5% of the total annual run of salmon is killed, leaving 95% plus to spawn.

2. Improving all spawning habitat by fencing, tree planting, etc and allowing full access by removing obstacles, culverts, breaching caulds and dams, amending fish passes etc. This cost several £ millions over a period of 15-20 years.

3. Reducing poaching, which in the 1980s was rife with many 1,000s of nets being removed from the river every year by bailiffs; this required consistently high annual investment in a highly professional bailiff team and in their machinery/equipment, so that today poaching is a fraction of what it was then.

4. Attempting to control all forms of in-river predation, notably by goosanders and cormorants, of which there were almost none in the 1960s and 1970s but which began to appear in unprecedented numbers in the 1980s; the Commissioners consistently apply for a licence to kill larger numbers of these pisciverous birds than the authorities allow (much to their frustration).

The results of all this, after 30 years of good management, are that now the Tweed has an annual rod catch of 15,000 salmon and a huge spawning escapement, both far higher than they has ever been in its entire history.

None of this has been achieved with any Government help, advice or money.

And now the Government comes along and, far from saying what a good job the Tweed has done, is effectively saying we have all been naughty and bad boys and girls, not to be trusted, so we are going to tell you what to do and you have to apply to us (who have done nothing whatever over 30 years to help) for licences.

Do you wonder we are all angry?

It will not do.

The Government thinks it can get its licensing, quotas and tagging legislation through….and in pure political power terms, of course, it can.

But can it make it work in the face of anglers’ and proprietors’ fury, apathy and cynicism as to the true motives?

We shall see, but I rather doubt it.