30 October 2016 News/Editorial
My kind and diligent correspondent has analysed counter results, into calendar quarters over the last 20 or 30 years, from those Scottish and English salmon rivers with main stem counters.
With many provisos, just one being that the English river figures contain sea trout, there are some very obvious trends:
January to March: low figures and very consistently low, no sign of increase.
April to June: more or less distinct upwards trends.
July to September: more distinct upwards trends.
October to December: very distinct downward trend.
The conclusion would seem to be what we are all beginning to suspect. No change in the early spring, increasing numbers in the late spring and summer, and distinctly fewer in the autumn.
This, of course, refers to fish coming into the rivers, which is not the same as when they are caught by the rods, as what comes next will show.
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Why didn’t all the salmon we have caught in October, the vast majority of which have not been silver/fresh, take when they first came into the river in June, July and August?
It is odd, because there is no doubt that there are substantial numbers of fish in many parts of the river, yet the lowest beats, which you would expect to have had bonanzas in the summer, did ok, but no better than that.
We have all been conditioned to thinking the most likely time to catch a salmon is when it first comes into the river, and in the 2 or 3 weeks afterwards.
With this October’s catch being at least double that of any other month, despite 90%+ of those caught not being silver/fresh, we might have to think again.
This may, at least partly, be explained by salmon becoming more aggressive, especially in cold water, the closer they get to spawning.
But it is still a bit odd.
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There are two elephants in the Tweed (and the wider Borders) room which nobody quite wants to talk about.
Those elephants are money and jobs.
If the river catch is settling down at around 8,000 salmon pa, when it used to be 16,000, the rate of Tweed assessment (the annual levy to the River Tweed Commission (RTC)) will be double, on a per fish basis, what it was just 3 years ago.
It is hard to imagine this will not have implications for the RTC and for the fishing beats from whom the annual levy is raised.
Then, of course, there are the hotels, the letting accommodation and pubs in which visiting anglers stay; and the angling and other shops which depend on a vibrant Tweed fishing sector.
Nobody quite knows how this will all settle down, for settle down it eventually will.
Per the economic survey completed this time last year, Tweed angling was worth 513 jobs and £24 million annually to the local economy.
Sadly, those figures are beginning to look optimistic.
Optimistic?
A characteristic shared, one hopes, by our Tweed fishermen and women, who will all be wishing that 2017 produces something better.
Next week will examine why there are grounds for optimism.
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And, finally, as we go into another week of benign, if slightly colder, weather, until the end of the week when it might get rougher, there has been no point, this September and October, at which I have recognised it as proper autumn fishing.
We have 6 boats here, 3 of which have never been used this autumn, 2 of the others very seldom; sinking lines have been remarkable by their absences, just as floaters with sinking tips have been de rigeur, often with extraordinarily small flies. The boatmen have hardly been in their boats, instead overseeing matters from the riverbank, as their angling wards can easily wade most pools.
Like the last two years, there has been nothing about it which one can recognise as the autumn fishing we can all remember from the past.
It has been the extraordinary weather and water conditions, as much as the extraordinary fish. No wind, little rain, warm and benign, and ageing fish….. throughout.
It was dry, calm and 14C when we came back from dinner at midnight last night, on the cusp of November.
Which says it all.
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