news/editorial

2 June News/Editorial

With May over, the sun shining, it is time to think of summer.

It is a curious relic of Tweed’s intensive netting days that conversations still surround “spring” and “autumn” fishing, but never “summer”.

In the days of 120 North East drift net licencees and 30 Tweed in-river and coastal nets, combined with low summer flows, very few salmon or sea trout escaped to be available to the rods. Now summers are wetter (this is bound to bring on a drought!) and netting is a fraction of what it was.

And yet, salmon beats are often underfished in summer, despite June and July latterly being just as productive as any spring months, and August catching as many as February to May combined.

There is precedence for summers providing spectacular fishing.

The 8^th Earl of Home wrote of his piscatorial exploits in 1795, “In the month of June, I killed in one week, between the Monday morning and Saturday night, 82 clean salmon, all in the finest condition and many of them large.” He also caught a 45lb sea licer in July of the same year.

A long time ago, but just maybe that was the last time netting in summer allowed the fish a half decent chance of getting through. We know for instance that Lord Somerville of Pavilion, supported by Sir Walter Scott, in 1807 got the first Tweed Act through Parliament mainly because the greedy lower proprietors were effectively blocking the river with their rapacious netting and trapping practices, and something had to be done to stop them.

So, can it be that Tweed summer fishing will some day eclipse either spring or autumn?

It’s a long shot, but it is certainly true that summer salmon now have a better chance than for well over 200 years to both survive and spawn. There is a run of fish that post dates the springers (all in by say mid June) and pre dates the start of the main grilse run (say late August), are quite large and up to now have never really had a chance to show their mettle.

So if you catch a 16 lb fresh hen fish in July, before you hit it on the head, just think that it is a remarkable survivor of the days when the combined sea and river nets caught and killed over 100,000 salmon and grilse destined for Tweed.

If it were up to Tweedbeats, we would give it a chance, put it back unharmed and one day Tweed’s summer fishing, given enough water, might again reach the dizzy heights of 1795.

Of course, there are those who will say “now you are suggesting we put back summer fish just at the point (1^st July) when we are allowed to start killing them!”

Well, at least think twice about it before embarking on some sort of killing spree just because it is past 1^st July.

But if and when you start catching grilse, then is the time to start thinking more about your freezer.