3 July 2022 News/Editorial
It rained last week, that alone should be headline news. Down this way we had three small rises, 4”, 6” and then 1 ft overnight Saturday/Sunday. Churlish to complain at such comparative bounty, but had it all come in one lump and produced a 3 or 4 footer, it would have cleaned the gravel and moved the weed into the sea. As it is, the weed has been rearranged and by Tuesday next week water levels will have returned to where they were before it rained.
If 150 salmon were caught last week, that would be about the size of it. With no functioning total catch system, a nirvana for the future one hopes, what can be said with certainty is that the 5 year average to 2021, for what the Tweed uniquely counts as spring, up to the end of June, is, give or take the odd salmon, 1,600 (albeit with a health warning for the unwelcome intrusion of covid in 2020 especially).
More or less educated guesswork is all we can do, until the catch returns that proprietors must fill in to the end of June each year are completed. That same guesswork to the end of May had the total at 1,300, and the top end of estimation for June would have it at some 600 for the month, making a very much upper limit of expectations at 2,000, with more cautious punters going for nearer 1,850.
Absent covid in 2020, it is unlikely the 5 year average would have reached those heights. The tentative conclusion, therefore, if we must have one, is that 2022 has been better than average in terms of catches, and with no help whatever from angling conditions, in May and June in particular.
If that is good news, the bad is that my Yr No and other forecasters are showing no reckonable rain for July, with most using the unwelcome (for fishers) words “high pressure” and “dominant”. Good if you are by way of going to Portugal; not so if you are a Scottish salmon angler, and sick to the back teeth of the desert that is the whole of the east of Scotland’s summer nowadays.
As for next week, with the forecast settled, breezy and not too hot, the first few days, as the extra water recedes, could be good.
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Two snippets this week.
My views on killing salmon are by now well known (as in “don’t do it”) and have gotten me into a whole heap of trouble in the past. No matter, from 1st July Tweed anglers have the option to kill a salmon they catch and almost everyone agrees that “restraint” is the operative word. I have never understood those who complain about nets (which kill salmon) and about lack of fish, when the complainants do exactly what the nets do (they kill them) and appear not to comprehend that killing does nothing for abundance, and possibly a lot for the lack of it. In some years the Tweed rods kill more salmon than the sole surviving net at Gardo kills, giving the rods zero moral high ground in the conservation stakes, when it comes to the acceptability of commercial netting nowadays. If you want to persuade netters not to net (Gardo is the only commercial net left operating in Scotland/England), how on earth can you do that when the Tweed rods are killing as many salmon, sometimes more, than the Gardo netters? Answers on a postcard, please.
My kind correspondent points out that the Ettrick fish counter results are in for 2021.
Most peculiarly the total fish (both salmon and sea trout) number was 3,855, of which 3,313 went up in November. Two points are of note, first, pre 2009 the lowest annual figure was 5,067 and the highest 7,654, so that the 2021 total is between 25% and 50% lower than it used to be. Those (few) who think there is no lack of salmon as compared to the past, please note. Secondly, for a tributary that traditionally carried the majority of our spring stocks, why did getting on for 90% go through the counter after 1st November, when springers have always progressed through the counter in September and October? There was enough water, or so it seems in October, so why did the salmon move into the Ettrick, above Selkirk, so late? The concern, not that anything can be done about it, is that the increased accessibility of the new fish pass, means that the Ettrick is becoming dominated by summer salmon, who would be more likely to to progress upstream in November, not springers. Here is the link for all 2021 fish counter results https://www.rivertweed.org.uk/media/y2jjojip/fish-counter-provisional-totals-2022.pdf
Even odder, the Gala, traditionally a home for later running summer and autumn fish, had most of its migration upstream, as usual, in October.
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Finally, welcome relief from such puzzles is at hand. Absent an Easyjet cancellation, we shall be away over next weekend, so these reflections will resume on 17th July. Au revoir.
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