4 February 2018 New/Editorial
The catch for the first three days of the 2018 season was 10 salmon, all caught, as is normal at this time of year, within a gnat’s crotchet of Kelso.
This means nothing as a predictor for 2018, Februarys, of late, being consistently low scorers at or around 200 salmon for the month.
Statistically the driest (August is the wettest) month in this part of the world, the consensus of the many available medium term forecasts for this February is that it will be both cold and dry, possibly very cold towards the end of the month as east winds pick up.
We are not done with winter, or rather it with us, quite yet, it seems.
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For those of you who have survived, so far, the myriad winter bugs and ‘flu, to say nothing of excessive festivities of a month or so ago, welcome back.
With expectations for salmon season 2018 at an all time low, and with acrimony and disagreement apparently rife about what can be done to halt what some see (I do not) as terminal decline, what can we expect of 2018?
I have no idea , but what I would like for 2018 for the Tweed are these:
1. That drift netting and T&J netting for salmon stops for good off the English north east coast (see http://www.rivertweed.org.uk/news/?p=6112 re EA moves to protect salmon stocks from 2018). It hardly bears repeating that drift netting for salmon off the Scottish coast was banned in the 1960s, over 50 years ago; never mind, if it stops now in England, we should all be grateful…..and with a quiet prayer of thanks to Orri Vigfusson.
2. That even the RSPB and SNH accept that cormorants and goosanders do damage to juvenile salmon (and other fish) numbers and that river managers must be given more (reasonable) powers to control them; in particular, the emergence of large (200+) inland colonies of cormorants is a comparatively new phenomenon, and river managers must be given powers to disperse/remove them. It bears very little contemplation what immense damage such large flocks, resident for long periods, can do.
3. That river managers are given greater powers to deter any seal venturing above a certain agreed point (the tidal boundary?) within the river.
4. That those who would have hatcheries on the Tweed, and make so much noise about them without understanding the sheer scale of our wild juvenile numbers and their population dynamics, finally stop promoting their simplistic (“like rearing pheasants”) solution.
5. That those who think birds and seals are responsible for the decline in autumn numbers take the trouble to understand the cyclical nature of salmon runs over the centuries as the real reason for reducing grilse and late running salmon numbers viz Ronald Campbell’s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DjuyMzxpt4 which is compulsory watching/listening for those who would profess to know anything about it.
Too much to hope for, you might say, (especially 4. and 5. above), but at least we might all agree that 1. to 3. above would go some way to rebalancing the scales of survival in favour of the unseen slaughter below water, and against those birds, mammals and humans who have been killing, largely unchecked, our juvenile and adult salmon.
And lastly, of course, we would all like a better salmon season in 2018. For the past 4 years the Tweed catch has been stuck somewhere around 6,500 to 8,000.
Four years ago, when our 5 year average was 16,000, an annual catch prediction of 10,000 for 2018 would have seemed disappointing.
Not now.
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And finally, my thanks to the good folk of Peebles, Hawick, Galashiels, Melrose, Innerleithen, Walkerburn…... and all places west of Coldstream.
The 13ft flood of ten days ago delivered great battalions of their bottles, both plastic and glass, and much other plastic detritus, to our river banks. I, and other like minded souls, have spent the last week or so picking up and putting it where it should have been in the first place…..in a bin, or some form of recycling.
If you think plastic ending up in the sea is someone else’s problem, it isn’t, we in the Borders are as bad as anyone else.
My first prize….to the person who was so rat-arsed, he/she threw away a third of a bottle of vodka (no I didn’t drink it, and no it wasn’t water).
My booby prize…….to the quality of the wine drunk upstream of here, judging by the labels on the bottles.
Disappointing.
Like the people who drank them ……..and then threw the bottles away.
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