31 May 2020 News/Editorial
An unashamedly, uncompromisingly conservationist message this week. Just as we seldom spot, in real time, when things are really good, it is often beyond our collective wit to “get it” when things are really really bad, and they were really really bad last year, having just been pretty awful for the five years before that.
You would think it would have sunk in by now, with all of our fellow anglers, that an uncompromising (that word again) precautionary approach to an unique resource is the only logical response in a critical situation, the precise causes of which (why are there so few salmon now?) none of us fully understands.
If what follows is too strong for you, bad luck, this is my blog. The time for the plainest of plain speaking is long overdue. Some of you are sitting there thinking, it will all come good in time, as it has before, all we have to do is wait. And you could very well be right, but that is a one way bet, no back up, no Plan B, no precautionary approach. I won’t be buying any of that.
Read on, if you dare.
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Just as Scotland joined the ranks of the piscatorially re-enfranchised, the great God of Weather produced the hottest and sunniest day of the year last Friday, nearly 27c on my thermometer-thingy. That some salmon were caught might owe much to that unmentionable weapon, spun upstream, rather than proper fishing with a floating line and small fly/skimmer/sunray.
There is something even more appalling about the upstream flying condom when the river is dead low and hot, and the fish are cooped up in the pools; fishing it might just about be, “sporting” it is not, especially when used to excess. “Nuff said”, I have beaten this drum for too long. We anglers need to behave ourselves, especially when our salmon are under both immediate and long term stress.
I ventured out at 6 am on Friday and Saturday for an hour, caught zippo but had 2 or 3 rises and a couple of pulls. There are fish there but why any cold blooded animal like our salmon should take a fly properly when the water temperature was over 70F on Friday evening, defeats me. It duly did.
As for our weather forecasters, after consistently predicting a continuation of this heat and drought for weeks to come, things have suddenly altered, so (perhaps) answering the farming and fishing prayers for change. It will be cool and changeable from Wednesday, with highs of just 12c-14c, much cooler nights, amounts of rain uncertain.
Please no hate mail, but having had two record breaking sunshine and dry months in lockdown, a glorious and perfect saviour to our isolation, it would not worry me one bit if the rest of the summer were to be, erm.
Well just a little bit rubbish.
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Amid all the Covid dramas, I missed the Marine Scotland publication of the total Scottish salmon rod and net catch figures for 2019.
With belated apologies, here they are. The rod catch was 47,515 salmon, the fourth lowest since records began in 1952 and the first since 1952 to have benefitted from virtually no netting anywhere, either in Scotland or in the north east of England. As such, and with pretty good angling conditions throughout the 2019 summer, that total can only be described as both very disappointing and concerningly low.
Of the 47,515 rod caught salmon, 3,786 were killed. Of these, the Tweed rods caught 6,382 (13.4% of the total caught) and killed 879 (23.2% of the total killed).
Of the other big rivers, the Spey caught 5,090, the Tay 4,524 and the Dee 3,173.
The Tweed rods were by some distance the biggest retainers/killers of salmon in Scotland, killing just under 1 in 4 of the total Scottish catch in 2019, and just under 1 in 3 of the total in 2018. With the Tay going 100% catch and release in 2020, unless the Tweed rods exercise much more restraint after 1st July in 2020 than they have hitherto, there could some fairly ugly headlines upcoming about Tweed’s conservation credentials vis a vis the rest of Scotland.
With the main “net and coble” Scottish (well English, but bear with me, for this purpose it is Scottish) net (Gardo in Berwick) also being on the Tweed and reporting killing more salmon than any other net in Scotland (336 salmon in 2019), whether the overall state of Tweed’s salmon stocks should really be suffering the killing of 1,215 (879 rods and 336 nets) of our salmon in 2019 will no doubt be a subject for discussion as we run up to 1st July. It certainly should be.
That rod catches, or lack of them, are good indicators of abundance, or lack of it, has long been a matter of debate. What follows (below) would tend to argue that there really have been extraordinarily few salmon over the last few years, for 2019 is just one in a long unbroken line of disappointment since 2013.
#My solution would be full catch and release (like the Tay, the Dee and the Spey) all season long until consistent (over a 5 year period) and sustained good numbers of adult salmon return to our great river. At the very least, and as an exceedingly poor second choice, with the all too obvious paucity of fresh autumn running salmon, I would ban the killing of any salmon of 10lbs and over from 1st September. Why kill any autumn salmon when there are now fewer of them than the springers, which we have been saving for over 10 years?
Our Tweed salmon retention/killing policy is beginning to look horribly out of step with our fellow travellers in the rest of Scotland.
We need to come into line, and soon.
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If you think all the above is scaremongering and that the flurry of fishy activity of late in the lower river here in May shows that all will be well, here are the Tweed counter figures for 2019 which are amongst the most concerning figures I have ever seen.
We have 3 tributary counters, Ettrick, Gala and Whiteadder.
Here are the 2019 actual counts of salmon as compared to longer term averages:
Ettrick pre 2010 average 3,494 salmon: 2019 count 1,491 salmon.
Gala pre 2019 average 1,334 salmon: 2019 count 715 salmon.
Whiteadder pre 2018 average 657 salmon; 2019 count 474 salmon.
Shockingly, these 2019 numbers in total come to less than half the previous averages, and some of the previous averages were not themselves at all high. Or if you think eg the Ettrick figure might be a blip, not so, the 2018 number was even lower at 1,304.
See this link to read more in detail of each count https://www.rivertweed.org.uk/news/?p=6708
Even with all the provisos as to the complete accuracy of the counter figures, are they really robust enough in terms of conservation of those specific tributary stocks, and aren’t they far too low to produce the great Orri Vigfussen’s mantra, “ an abundance of fiske”? Projected egg depositions, based on these 2019 numbers of adult spawners in each tributary, are too close for comfort to minimum sustainable levels.
So when you next think of killing a Tweed salmon in July, August or September, the months in which most of the killing occurs, ask yourself this:
“Why am I even thinking of killing this fish when the evidence is that all of Tweed’s spawning tributaries have suffered dramatic declines in numbers of returning adult salmon, some of which may be approaching critical levels?”
Do not kill it, please, let it go and do your bit for saving a magical species from further decline.
This time next year, who knows, that fish, which you did not kill, will show up in vitally needed increases.
In the 2020 counter figures.
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I caught my first salmon on the Tweed in 1960, and I have been living on or fishing in, frequently both, the Tweed in all of the 60 years in between.
Last year, 2019, was unquestionably the low point in salmon numbers over those 60 years; no UK coastal or river nets, no UDN, no Greenlanders or Faroese catching 1,000s of tonnes every year, no poaching, no Russian trawlers scooping them up like sardines, in short, no excuses.
The Tweed counter numbers confirm what those of us who observe these things already suspected. 2019 was (hopefully) a nadir from which our salmon must recover to safer stock levels.
To do just that, they need your help.
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