news/editorial

4 April 2021 News/Editorial

Forgive me if we start with a particular hobby horse.

There is a standard get out clause, “excuse” to you and me, when there aren’t any fish. I quote from recent River Tweed Commission reports.

2017 “lack of fishing effort in the back end”.....”not helped by lack of fishing effort on the river at times, which may have depressed catches further”.

2018 “coupled with lack of fishing effort, made it difficult to assess how many fish have entered the river”

2019 “fishing effort also played their part”

2020 “little fishing effort in February and March”

Now, of course, sometimes, as in April and most of May last year, when we were not allowed to fish at all, you can hardly argue with it. But that was unique. Sometimes the weather intervenes, but then I remember one of the best autumns ever in the 1980s, we never fished more than 3 days in any week because of floods, yet the fish were there in numbers. We caught loads. Prolonged heat and drought can be devastating for catches, but that is “conditions” not “effort”.

To be clear, any lack of fish being caught now has nothing whatever to do with effort, and to the extent that it has, it is because the fish simply are not there, so folk tend to go fishing less. I can see future reports, looking back at 2021, saying, “partly because of lack of fishing effort, the numbers caught in February and March were well below average.”

How odd that when the catch numbers are high, nobody ever says it is “partly because of extra fishing effort”, which of course it is because with more fish, we all tend to fish harder, longer and catch even more? Funny old game.

Oh no, no mention of fishing effort when times are good, it is always because of the large numbers of fish?! Not my fault, Gov, when things is bad, and aren’t I a clever boy when things is good? In fact, of course, none of us has the faintest idea what fish are going to come back, when and how many, and anyone, directly or obliquely, either side stepping blame, or taking credit, is a pretty futile performance.

It is all, of course, nobody’s fault, our Tweed river managers and scientists do a fantastic job, we are lucky to be so well looked after, and the quicker we all realise the randomness of what comes back to us from the sea, the better. For both good and bad, it is why salmon fishing is so unpredictable and exciting.

For the record, the Lees has dropped off the Tweedbeats scoresheet on the homepage. We have caught nothing for 3 weeks and good rods have been fishing every day, often in excellent conditions. Why? As yet, there are few fish, under 20 caught on the whole river last week. No excuses needed. That’s fishing. It will change.

As for next week, the river itself should be a good height throughout, but with strong winds from the north and west, with frost at night and a max of 6c for the first 3 days, the best advice?

Rug up.

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If you do your annual fishing accounts, for our friends at HMRC, to 31st March 2021, then the summary of the last year goes something like this:

April 2020 Fishing not allowed

May 2020 “ “ (until mid/late month when locals only)

June 2020 Locals only

July 2020 All systems go

Aug 2020 “

Sep 2020 “

Oct 2020 “

Nov 2020 Locals only

Dec 2020 Off season

Jan 2020 Off season

Feb 2020 Locals only

Mar 2020 “

In other words, in all but 4 months out of 12, there was either no fishing at all, or only locals (with varying definitions of “locals”) could get here to fish. The RTC has reduced the 2021 assessment by 10% (no reduction in 2020), and furlough, the word we have all become familiar with, has been available to cover part of boatmen's salaries when there was little/nothing for them to do. Allowing all that, it has been a stinker financially, salvaged somewhat by the sheer unexpected weight of fish last late spring and summer, the lowest and lower beats being the main beneficiaries.

The admin has been a nightmare, either repaying, or rolling over, bookings in 6 out of the last 10 months of the fishing year. Faced with some double rollovers, we here have repaid in full the vast majority of our 2021 spring (pre 26th April) tenants so that we can all start with a clean sheet, absent Covid, one hopes and prays, in 2022. Most of our May and June 2021 tenants are rollovers from 2020, and fingers crossed they will still be able to travel and stay here, and fish. But then our charming longstanding German tenants will not be allowed to travel for the end of May, so they too will be repaid, hoping that we will, after a 2 year break, see them again in 2022.

For those repaid, we have charged neither cancellation nor admin fees for re-lets, where someone could technically travel here, but for personal and/or health reasons felt uncomfortable doing so. It is nobody’s fault that they cannot/do not want to get here. Cancellation is mainly mandatory, not voluntary. No doubt we have all done things slightly differently, but the priority must be to be fair to customers, and hope that they will be good enough to come back when this is all over.