30 June 2019 News/Editorial
Tweed’s rod catch last week was disappointing, if partly weather related thanks to sun and heat from Wednesday, at 80 salmon and 133 sea trout, making the 2019 totals to the end of June, half time in our ten month fishing season, 1,718 salmon and 650 sea trout, all within 90% accuracy.
Those of a mathematical bent will note that last week’s total of 1,518, plus 80 for the week, does not come to 1,718! This is because William Younger, to whom we are all indebted for these up-to-date figures, has taken the opportunity of the 30th June half time date to re-run all the figures, and confirms that 1,718, still within 90% accuracy, is the one we should go with until the RTC publishes the correct figure, taken from proprietors’ completed returns, sometime in August/ early September.
The published correct salmon score at half time in 2018 was 1083 salmon and 265 sea trout. That 2019 has been a step-change better than 2018 so far for both salmon and sea trout cannot be doubted.
The month of June 2019 total was 608 salmon and 379 sea trout, against 10 year averages of 500 salmon and 364 sea trout, indicating again that Tweed’s June 2019 fishing has been better than the long term average.
With several disappointingly bullish predictions from the Met Office about deluges engulfing the Borders over the last few weeks, every one of which has proved to be wrong, they now tell us that next week will be dry, if generally a little breezier and cooler than last week. With river levels already very low, this is bad news for all but the lowest beats who should have pretty good conditions, given the increasing size of the tides.
The litmus test will be if they start catching numbers of fish, something they have conspicuously not been doing over the last two weeks indicating a worrying, if hopefully temporary, lull in salmon coming into the river.
Maybe not quite squeaky bum time for those worried about the very recent, rather sudden, dearth of fresh fish.
But nearly.
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As we approach 1st July, tomorrow, Tweed’s salmon fishers could be forgiven for thinking they are not quite sure how they are expected to behave when they actually catch a salmon on or after that date.
Up until 30th June it has all been very definite; it is illegal to take a salmon from the water between 1st February and 31st March, and from 1st April to 30th June, by agreement with the River Tweed Commission (RTC) and Tweed proprietors, no rods will kill any salmon, and all salmon caught must be released unharmed, so far as possible, to the water.
So far, so very clear.
From 1st July, technically, in law, and in the absence of any direction from the RTC, there are no rules, other than it is illegal to sell a rod caught salmon which you have killed. In other words, in theory you can do what you like, so that if you were lucky enough to catch (say) five salmon and kill them all, so long as you did not seek to sell them, you have done nothing wrong.
Except that you have.
In spades.
Not only would proprietors like me not allow you back, ever, but you would incur the wrath of most ghillies/boatmen, whose jobs depend on the survival, successful spawning and consequent proliferation of the species. Or as Orri Vigfusson used to put it “we need an abundance of fiske”, and we have no such thing, or anything like it, at present.
There is an added piquancy and moral ambiguity here in 2019, because all salmon rod fishers should know by now that the North East drift net fishery and the T&J nets have been stopped from operating at all (for salmon), effectively put out of business for good, because they killed our Tweed (and other) salmon (and lots of them). How now can we, the beneficiaries of that, in all conscience kill those saved salmon which we catch, when we screamed blue murder at the injustice of it all when they were being caught and killed by the nets? I know the argument is slightly different because they were interceptory/mixed stock nets, catching fish from they never knew which rivers, but nevertheless there is seriously something wrong if we simply start killing what they have been stopped, for conservation reasons, from killing. And we know that up to 75% of what the drift nets caught were Scottish salmon, most of those from the Tweed.
If there is one thing we have learned of late, it is that the Atlantic salmon is under existential threat as never before, and that there is only one priority, which is both to save the species, and allow it to prosper. We all have a responsibility, both to the salmon and to future generations of anglers, to do all we can to help achieve that.
Those who still oppose catch and release, for moral or whatever other reasons, are well off the pace, dinosaurs from a long gone age of abundance.
For many of us a reasonable maxim, in the absence of any precise guidelines, is to kill only what you personally want to eat, preferably a fresh little grilse, and try not to kill any big female, say over 8lbs, however many sea lice it has on it (because you are also killing its 5,000/10,000 eggs).
Spare the priest, if you possibly can, and then enjoy the sight of what you have caught swimming back into the water.
Free to spawn.
Thank you.
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By way of correction to last week’s ornithological interlude, reference was made to our two families of geese. I erred in two respects.
Caught red-handed emerging, in single file, from Colin McGegor’s wheat field on Wednesday morning, there were 17 of them (not 15), 4 parents and 13 young, and they are definitely Greylags (not Pink-footed), because their legs were yellowish, not pink (it helps being able to see them walking, rather than sitting on the water), and the other markings quite clearly more Greylag-ish.
My father used to tell me, many years ago, that both Greylags and Pink-footed did not breed this side of the Outer Isles.
No longer, it seems. As with everything nowadays, it is all change.
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