news/editorial

4 September 2016 News/Editorial

Why is it, you might ask, that the Great Giver of Rain has forsaken the Tweed for the 3rd year in a row?

As a SEPA flood warning yesterday passed with no more than an inch or two of extra flow in the headwaters, translating no doubt to negligible amounts where we all want to fish, our fishermen are destined, if the forecasters are right, to another warm, maybe even very warm, dry week with little prospect of any rain.

Yet I spent yesterday at a wonderful wedding in Hampshire, despite what can only be described as torrential rain, which lasted on and off for about 6 hours. The wedding ceremony was to be outside in the garden but had to be held in a marquee, with the deluge hammering down on the canvas and the sides running with what seemed a permanent gusher of liquid.

Moreover, this was no good to the Test, on a carrier of which the amazing, larger, post ceremony, marquee, was placed, an idyllic spot if ever there was one. For the Test gets its water from aquifers which build up, like great underground lakes, over the winter, and then keep the river flowing over the summer, despite any droughts.

So why does Hampshire, Wales, Yorkshire, Cumbria and virtually everywhere else, get rain in bucketfuls, but the eastern Borders, the Tweed catchment in particular, gets the odd glassful, but no more?

And if September turns out to be flood free, it will be the third late summer /early autumn of fishing, after 2014 and 2015, of summer levels or below, and the sixth successive month without the height getting above 4ft (let alone 6ft which is a proper flood) on the Sprouston guage.

Just when we all want to have a good year, and now to see what there is to catch after 1st September with the northeast T&J nets and the 12 remaining drift nets now off for another year……..it is likely to be only the very lowest beats, just off the tide, who get to see what fresh fish there are.

Which, without wishing to be too depressing, is a pity.

But you never know, with fishing as with life, there is always hope.

This week’s forecast looks to have some useful rain in it for the end of the week, coming up from the southwest.

But will it be enough?