news/editorial

2 February 2020 News/Editorial

A new season, a new beginning, and with both of those, a resurgence of hope for all our ever optimistic anglers. Welcome all to 2020. To another year of Sunday evening piscatorial in(s)anities on these pages.

The off-season provided some floods, 11ft at Coldstream the biggest, but nothing that would imperil the vital laying of eggs, successful fertilisation and subsequent survival of the newly born on the spawning beds.

Goosanders and cormorants remained a common sight over December and January, but perhaps not quite as many of the larger black variety as we have seen in recent years; maybe they are getting the message. They are not welcome. Come March they will begin to go back to the coast, where they belong.

Opening day, yesterday, provided less than perfect conditions, half a gale in the morning and a river on the big side, nevertheless perfectly fishable, and a score of 3 salmon will not excite. Of the pictures seen, there was a pinkish hue about the fish, hardly indicative of salmon straight in off the tide.

Whilst trying to forget one my father’s sayings about 1st February “if they are not there on opening day, they are not coming at all”, times were very different in the 1950s and 1960s, as was the scale of measuring success in spring fishing. A good spring then, despite massive netting but with pretty unscrupulous rod fishing methods (prawns and golden sprats), was unrecognisable in terms of numbers, compared to what we can expect now.

Our returning salmon and grilse in 2020 will, in the main, be those born after the devastating floods of winter 2015/16, which so damaged spawning beds and produced some of the lowest juvenile counts we have ever seen. We also know from consistent and commonly agreed observations of those in the lower river, that the smolt runs of 2018 and 2019 were prodigious.

Reasons to hope that things will be better in 2020?

Maybe.

(Ed’s note. For the technical, 2:2s, some springers and larger summer and autumn salmon, would still be from 2015/16, so there may not be many of them. By 2021, the ill-effects of winter 2015/16 will have gone, because 3:2s hardly exist now).