news/editorial

3 March 2019 News/Editorial

Tweed’s catch for last week was 42 salmon and 1 sea trout, bringing the running total to 2nd March 2019 to 100 salmon and 1 sea trout.

With a very unsettled week in prospect, starting with Storm Freya tonight and more wind and rain on Wednesday, whereas conditions were pretty much perfect throughout last week, it is not clear how much productive fishing will be possible in the week to come.

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Without giving too much away about the final Tweed salmon catch score for 2018 (formally to be approved and reported to the RTC at its AGM tomorrow), I can say that William Younger’s estimated running total, which he emails to both Tweedbeats and Fishpal every Sunday morning without fail, at 5,580 salmon, given out at the end of November last year, was extraordinarily accurate.

He modestly claims 90% accuracy, whereas in fact he was 99% accurate. It is a tedious task getting the figures together (from two websites and several other normally non-reporting beats) and he should be thanked by everyone who likes to be dealing with accurate up-to-date figures for the Tweed as a whole, rather than their partial, and therefore inaccurate and misleading, predecessors.

The truth is that despite some less than helpful fishing conditions, the “beast from the east” and then that summer, there simply were not the numbers of fish.

Whenever the weather is blamed for fish not being caught, I like (smugly) to point at the winter/spring of 1963, which winter lasted for 3 months, well into March, and even in the south of England, snow lay on the ground for 62 consecutive days. It was the coldest, longest winter since 1740, colder even that 1947, itself a legendary brute.

I can remember 1963 well. The 2018 “beast from the east” was rough for a week or so, but a minor trifle in comparison.

In the Spring of 1963, up to the end of May, we caught 150 springers here, with never more than 2 rods fishing. Up to the end of May 2018, with 4 rods on almost every day when fishable, we caught 19 springers.

But the killer comparison is at Upper Floors. In May 1963, once the river finally unfroze and settled, Upper Floors caught 283 in that month alone. In May 2018, Upper Floors caught just 8 salmon.

You can complain as much as you will about the 2018 weather and fishing conditions, the unfortunate truth is that there were very few fish.

No more need be said.

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It is unusual for these pages to concentrate on one person, even if only for a few inadequate lines.

Douglas Dobie has been Chairman of the River Tweed Commission for the last 7 years, during which time, especially since 2014, he has had to suffer (not too strong a word) considerable turbulence, all of it because salmon rod catches have sunk to almost one third of what they were pre 2014.

He has endured the accompanying flak with admirable equanimity and good grace, and, you would think with a huge sigh of relief, he retires this Monday 4th March at the RTC’s AGM. Quite how he has retained his senses of humour, proportion and perspective through it all, I have no idea. I for one, could not have done, because underlying it all, from the most voluble critics, despite all the evidence to the contrary, has been the accusation that someone is to blame and, as RTC Chairman, of course it must be him.

We all owe him a huge debt of gratitude (as RTC Chairman he gets nothing else, as it is forbidden by law that he is paid) for holding the ship steady in a period of extreme turmoil. I was tempted to say unparalleled turmoil, but that would be untrue in terms of fish catches, because what happened between 1967 and 1977 was far worse, with UDN coinciding with a cyclical change from spring to autumn dominance.

I do not recall the Chairman then receiving anything like the same flak; maybe then there was a wider understanding of both the bounty, and the opposite, of a wild resource in the natural world?

The curious fact is that the anger levelled at both the Chairman and the RTC executive has, by and large, not come from the proprietors, who, you could easily argue, have lost the most, their incomes having dropped by 60% over 4 years, but from non-proprietorial Commissioners and from the wider angling and river community.

You would expect me to applaud, as I do, that steadfast band of proprietors, wedded to their piece of this great river Tweed for the long term and comparatively untroubled by periodic catch fluctuations, quite unlike the more temporary and peripatetic band of anglers and other non proprietors.

Such a statement will, of course, be construed by those determined to make mischief as a put down to those who have been most voluble in their complaints and concerns; wrongly, because the strength of the RTC is that it is a very broad church, and while it may be true that the proprietors have complained least, it can also be true that the loudest complainers have cared most. Concern and worry about the last few years, and what has become of our fish, is the one thing that unites us all.

I trust and hope you will join me in thanking Douglas for everything he has done for the good of this great river, and for all he has had to endure on our behalf.

When he receives his well deserved and customary parting gift from his peers on Monday, may it be slightly more appropriate, and less unusual, than his predecessor received, 7 years ago at the same meeting, on his departure.

It was a bronze - of a warthog.

Which says it all.

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These pages will lie doggo for a week, omitting next Sunday 10th March, until 17th March, for I am off on a short winter break.

If a cursory reading of the UK weather forecast is correct for the week ahead, it is unlikely that there will be great tales of derring-do on the river banks until things settle down again.

Hasta la vista.