news/editorial

2 February 2014 News/Editorial

So, after 2 months off, here we go again….or rather we don’t (bar one springer caught at Upper Floors yesterday), and if the forecast is correct, we might well not get going properly for some time yet.

We may not be the Somerset Levels, but the river has pretty much been in flood right through December and January, not huge floods but some consistently big ones.

What does this mean for the fish?

Statistically February is the worst fishing month because there are so few early springers, and trying to find them in all that water could provide some real challenges for any brave February fishers.

Moreover, they are as likely to be at Boleside as the Junction, so mild has it been and the water temperature so warm. It is warmer now than it was in April last year, nothing to stop those early springers going as far upstream as they want.

Kelts will have had it easy too, no problem in getting back down to the sea. It is tempting to think that they will all have gone, but some seem to take their time, and it would not be surprising if there are plenty still about in March and even early April. What with all that water to wash them away and numbers of otters to eat up the dead ones, we may be spared the decaying unpleasantness of rotting kelts, one of the least enjoyable characteristics of early spring fishing in some years.

And spawning, how will that have gone?

After a dry early autumn and November, the December and January spawners will have been able to get wherever they want, spread out, one hopes, right through the system There is always concern with floods about eggs being washed away and consequent paucity of juveniles, but unless the floods are really extreme or snow/ice induced, these fears are usually unfounded. By investigating sites in the past which have suffered large floods, it is seen that by August they are full of juvenile salmon and trout.

The one exception was the Gala some 5 years ago whose middle reaches were damaged by a sudden dramatic and very local snow melt flood, with juvenile salmon that August almost completely absent when electrofished. But the next August again, after a normal spawning winter, those same areas were positively teeming with juveniles.

In future efforts on these pages I will cover netting issues brought into sharp relief recently by the absurd decision of SNFAS to start netting and killing those incredibly few early spring salmon, a decision which richly deserves to rebound on them. The Scottish Government is also reviewing how salmon fisheries are managed, so, even with its own legislation, how could this affect the Tweed?

And then there is the Scottish independence referendum and how will that, if the yes camp wins, affect a river in two territories like the Tweed?

There is much to look forward to (or not!), but most of all we fisherman hope for a good fishing season in 2014.

The Atlantic Salmon Trust once told me that following their SALSEA programme they would one day be able to predict what sort of season Scottish rivers would have by observing the Greenland and Faroese feeding grounds.

I have heard nothing, so presumably they don’t know, and I suspect they never will.

Only time will tell, and anyway who wants to be told what sort of season it will be?

Anticipation, as with most things, is a large part of the fun.