news/editorial

2 May 2021 News/Editorial

Whereas you could hardly describe last week’s catches as stellar, there is some upwards momentum, with around 85 or 90 caught, compared to 50 the week before, and 30 the week before that. Conditions have not changed, so the logical conclusion is that more fish have arrived despite the low water and persistent cold, which is encouraging as we get closer to the summer months when we now all expect the main Tweed run to arrive.

Rain is forecast for Monday as an Atlantic storm looms, the first for many weeks, breaking the drought, cold and sunshine of April. It will not bring any warmth, with winds remaining stubbornly northerly. Those anticipating some heat, and not having to put on 83 layers of clothing every time you step out of bed, look like having to wait until at least the second half of May for that.

Some say that this April has not only broken all (low) rainfall records, but that it was also the coldest (more frosts) and the sunniest (more hours of sunshine) ever. To have broken one record is something, to have come close to breaking three is remarkable indeed.

As for next week’s fishing, much will depend on the extent and consequent fall-out of Monday’s storm/rain. The stones on the river bed, clean as a whistle 6 weeks ago, are looking distinctly slimy now. It needs a “guid flush-oot”. Which would also improve the fishing, in time.

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If there is one issue which has dogged the traditional salmon (rod) fishing community, it is “catch and release”. There is a sort of underground grumble about it, mainly amongst the older brigade, for most of the young have never known anything but, and cannot quite comprehend why you would ever want to kill a wild salmon in the first place.

Suddenly, those who had never given much thought to the ethical issues of sticking a hook into a salmon for fun, over many years of fishing (and killing), had become welfare guardians and continued the propaganda that it is only justifiable to stick a hook in its mouth, if you intended to kill and eat it. Indeed, as you can no longer, by law, sell a rod caught salmon, eating it is now the only option, once killed.

Curiously, it was often the same people saying this who spent their (non fishing) lives shooting, and not eating but a fraction of the game birds they knocked out of the skies, year in, year out. Ah, they said, but we kill them instantly, they feel no pain, so all is well. Any picker-up at any shoot is employed just because that is not true, a “pricked” pheasant can lead a pretty painful post-shoot few days, often dying a lingering death, or at best limping along for the rest of its life.

In the 1960s, my father, my godfather, an uncle and a McEwen (4 guns) shot 550 pigeons in Spylaw wood one afternoon, the pigeons flighting from feeding on English stubbles to roosting in those nice warm woods at the Hirsel; Spylaw was en route. They picked up 60 pigeons the next day under the trees, behind where they had been standing, all which had been “pricked” the previous day and had died and fallen out of the trees overnight.

I have always thought that some of those who objected to catch and release did so for wholly selfish reasons, with ethics as a convenient camouflage. In short, they just wanted to kill, and then show off to their friends, what they had caught. In the “old days”, of course, rod caught salmon were killed and sold to pay the fishing rent, nothing was released until very late in the season when the words “gravid” and “unseasonable” came into play, when by law they must go back.

But there are some, a few, the true ethical believers, who have had to give up fishing entirely. They genuinely believe that you can only justify the “hook in the mouth” bit if, when you step into the water to fish, you are definitely going to kill and eat everything you catch. In today’s climate, that effectively means they cannot fish, and you must respect their views, even if you might not agree with them.

The irony here is that this is all exactly the opposite argument that has bedevilled the UK coarse fishing community of late. Readers will be aware that the norm in the UK, over countless decades, is that every coarse fish caught is returned to the water. George the carp, has been hooked and landed more times than he, or anyone else, can remember. For all we know, he may quite like the occasional hook tickling his mouth, and an energetic run around his very own mere. After all, life must be quite dull and samey for a carp in a pond. Good old George, they say, he now weighs 42lbs, whereas he was only 39lbs three months ago. Nobody knows precisely how old he is, but very old he most certainly is. There is a roll of honour in the local pub, the Pig and Whistle (what else?), for those who have captured him, with the dates and weights alongside the captors’ names. Pictures adorn the walls of his progress in the superweight class. There will be a day of mourning, great gnashing of piscatorial teeth, headlines even in the local Press, when George finally turns up his fins, defeated by anno domini, no less, and swims up to meet the Great Carp in the sky.

But then, disaster! Johnny Foreigner, mainly from Eastern Europe, came to stay in the UK, which is all very good, except, horror of horrors, that the culture in EE is that you kill and eat what you catch!! Which they did, and the uproar in UK traditional coarse fishing circles could be heard in Timbuktu. Peace may now have broken out, but one suspects that wherever Vlad is seen sporting a carp rod and stock of goodies to lure George or one of his mates from the depths, said Vlad will be viewed with the deepest suspicion by the locals for some time to come.

So where does all that leave us/me? I fear my view is troublingly unethical and pragmatic. The most important people who really care about our salmon are our owners and their visiting salmon fishermen and women; they provide all the money to run a great river such as the Tweed; fishers come here to catch salmon, to see salmon jumping and for the most part, if they do and see that, they will come back; the worst thing that could possibly happen is that there are no salmon to see or catch; ergo, while salmon stocks are generally low, certainly in historical terms very low, catch and release will be the presumption, if not yet the law all year round.

If I were to be marginally kinder about my own motives/ethics, as earlier musings may have betrayed, I love this river and its fish, and woe betide those who put either at risk, for whatever reasons. I now find it difficult to even look at a dead salmon, one killed by human hand, and rail against the Gods if one is so badly hooked it dies, or cannot be revived. It happened twice last year, a body blow each time, and if I ever give up fishing, it will be for that reason. Prior to landing a salmon, the first thing I try to see is where the fly is, if visible, all is well. If not, is it down its throat, is there already blood in the water? I just cannot bear it when one of those magnificent creatures dies because of something I have done. “Wet” and “old age” you will say. Maybe, but we are who we are. There is now no changing that, too late.

It is very simple. Try this. You have a conversation with the next salmon you catch, ask it “Now that I have stuck a hook in your mouth and towed you around the river, before pulling you into the shallows and taking the hook out, you have a choice. Would you like me to hit you very very hard on the head, or let you swim quietly back into the water to continue your rather jolly journey upstream to Peebles and beyond?”

“Oh, yes please” said the salmon ”I would love it if you hit me really really hard on the head, thank you so much”. Trite maybe, but that reply from the salmon is as unlikely as any Tweed angler, who can afford to pay the rent to fish in the first place, being able to persuade you and me that he/she needed to kill a salmon to keep some food on the table.

Remind me, exactly why did you kill that salmon? Just because you wanted to? Well, that’s alright then.

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All our inboxes and texts/Whatsapps have been inundated over the last Covid year with questionable offerings from hither and yon designed to make us laugh, to lift the mood, to lighten the load. Some have gone way too far, so beyond any known pale that the “delete” button has been the only acceptable response. Others have been risque, if just on the ok side of the line.

One such (I hope) is from Berkmann’s Cricketing Miscellany.

There was an all rounder who played for New Zealand in 20 Tests in the 1960s/70s called Bob Cunis. “Funny sort of name” said commentator Alan Gibson ” neither one thing nor the other.”

Not only would you not get away with saying that now, but you, the reader, only score points if you do not understand it.

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Until the next time.