4 July 2021 News/Editorial
If ever there was a demonstration of the more punishing of the two great perils for fishers, drought and flood, that drought is the worse, then last week was it. It was calm, warm and sunny until Saturday, with water levels ever more shrunken. More impossible salmon fishing conditions would be hard to find. That fewer than 40 salmon were caught last week, says it all.
Relief may be at hand as low pressure takes over for a few days, but forecasters cannot agree, probably because they do not know, both where and how much rain there will be. We need bucketloads, preferably somewhere west of Galashiels and Hawick, between now and Thursday, after which the forecast is mainly dry again. By the look of the radar pictures as this is being written on Sunday afternoon, the Hawick area is very far from dry.
Absent such rain, the better entertainment next week might be in following the progress of the England football team, on which most of those north of the border are so keen (not), or the new 18 year old British tennis wunderkind Emma Raducanu, as she frightens the life out of the more established tennis stars at Wimbledon.
We hear tell of fish trying to get in at Horncliffe and below, but not progressing far upstream. Given the state of the river, who can blame them? Swimming around in the sea off Berwick for a few more days must seem an infinitely preferable option, despite any marauding seals and dolphins.
June has been dry in these parts, quite unlike the south. April dry, May wet, June dry, if the pattern continues will July be wet, or at least wetter? We fishers can only hope.
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On that subject, if there is one aspect of our fishing, and the rivers we fish in, we take for granted, it is the water.
Do any of us, here on the Tweed, really understand fully the regulatory regime, the whole system that ensures both the continuing quality and quantity of water? The acid test, for we anglers and for all environmentally aware folk, is that the water should at all times be such that it never harms the ability of all the fish and other organisms within it to both survive and prosper optimally, even in the most extreme of times. (For clarification, acid, or so I have always been told, is not one of the problems with Tweed’s water.)
Those extremes could be frost (river frozen over for weeks a la 1962/63), flood (the 2015/16 deluges over Christmas/New Year and of course the 12th August 1948 tsunami of rain), drought (too many “below summer level” instances to count) and heat (whenever the water temperature exceeds 70F).
There is little we can do to mitigate the effects (for the river and fish, as opposed to humans) from dramatic polar freezes, or indeed from 6 ½ inches of rain in 24 hours (the 1948 flood), but we can anticipate, and prepare the river for, both drought and heat. That we will get both prolonged, damaging droughts and extreme heat, even up here in Scotland, is beyond doubt.
Just as nobody saw the global pandemic coming (bar Bill Gates), and had done too little to cope with it when it arrived, so we can all predict that over the next 30-50 years the Tweed water will at times get close to being minimally available, both in the main stems and especially in the smaller feeder streams. It will also become far too hot for our cold water loving fish. 70F water temperature for a few days is survivable, at 80F+, coupled with low water flows, there will be fatalities.
Of course, we are lucky in having several reservoirs (Talla, Fruid, Megget etc) and compensation arrangements for releasing freshets when things are looking bad, but some would like to know more eg how much of our Tweed water is routinely diverted to Edinburgh and elsewhere, what is the monitoring regime for abstraction by potato farmers, what are SEPA’s powers and monitoring abilities to stop excessive abstraction, etc etc ? What are the respective regimes for abstraction from the English and Scottish sides and are they effective/enforced?
In short, are our fish safe in all drought/heat scenarios, if not, why not, and what can we therefore do to change things? Or, like the Covid pandemic, are we only going to find out that they are not safe when extreme drought and heat strike, too late?
There may well be a plan, a disaster/drought/heat scenario. If there is, should we not see it? If there is not, maybe we should be doing one?
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My old friend Tom Fort and his long suffering wife, Helen (former editor of Radio 4’s Today Programme news), came to stay on Monday. We spent a happy hour visiting the River Tweed Salmon Fishing Museum in Kelso, in the Town Hall, slap bang in the middle of the Square (you can't miss it). We then repaired to the Floors Terrace Cafe for an excellent lunch, overlooking the walled garden and its glorious borders. The Museum, most knowledgeably manned that day by Jim Smail, long time boatman at Lower Floors, is beautifully presented with countless exhibits and full of information for the piscatorially aware and the historically inclined. You will find something new, and of interest, every time you go.
Tom is an author of great distinction, having written some eleven books on such diverse subjects as the A303 (still selling like hot cakes), Eels (the latter having just been relaunched), the British obsession with lawns “The Grass is Greener”, “Village News” about Britain's rural idyll, and many more (as ever Amazon via google will provide).
His passion for fishing is undimmed despite advancing years, as his determination to leave the dinner table, excellent company, rather good claret and a delicious pavlova, at 9.45pm, in vain pursuit of Tweed’s very choosy brownies, demonstrated all too well. That he failed with the trout mattered not one jot, or so he claimed.
If you want a thoroughly good read on the noble art and its history, why not acquire a copy of his “Casting Shadows”, Amazon again and now in paperback? In some humble opinions, mine inc, it is amongst his very best, and at the risk of tmi (too much information) a copy is resident in the smallest room in our house, so that I can dip into it and remind myself of the interior gems.
The whole evening was ruined when Nigel Houldsworth, purveyor extraordinaire of Tweed and many other salmon pools/rivers maps (available online https://www.fishingmaps.co.uk/), here for dinner with his equally long suffering, Mel, presented Tom with his copy of “Casting Shadows” and asked him to sign it. So far, so good, until the words “To Nigel, a truly great fisherman” mysteriously appeared alongside Tom’s signature, to insufferable crowing from the mapster.
The only plausible explanation is that good money had changed hands.
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