news/editorial

4 September 2022 News/Editorial

Yet again weather warnings, for rain, for the Borders have been issued, and for the umpteenth time since March there has been hardly any, certainly insufficient for a meaningful flood. The rest of next week looks unsettled as a low pressure system meanders from west to east, but whether it does what we all want in the Tweed catchment is anyone’s guess.

Last week produced better catches as the water temperature dropped to around 60F, but information from the beats below Coldstream is that few of them were silver, fresh fish. The total rod catch could have been around 200 salmon as compared to 75 the previous week, but little was caught above Coldstream, almost nothing above Kelso, a situation that is unlikely to change unless we get water.

--00--

The following paper http://www.hwa.uk.com/site/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/AF-Solomon_et_al-2004-Fisheries_Management_and_Ecology.pdf may be of interest to those who wonder what effect prolonged drought has on salmon numbers successfully entering our rivers, the point being that danger (seals, dolphins, porpoises) lurks in the estuary, and off the coast, as our salmon mill around in the sea for weeks waiting for the green light, in the form of a flood, to encourage them to come into the river.That there is danger there cannot be doubted as we have all seen the pictures of dolphins playing “catch the salmon” off Berwick.

This paper indicates that as many as 50% of the migrating salmon can be lost in a year like this, as compared to another year when they arrive at the river mouth eg at Berwick, and can swim, unhindered, straight into the river, with plenty of welcoming fresh rainwater coming down the river to encourage them in.

Regardless of numbers, the basic point from the paper is that in high river flows salmon required little or no acclimatisation time to enter the river, and pretty much went straight in. By stark contrast, in low river water flows, the salmon do not immediately enter the river and can wait around off the coast for weeks and months, thereby rendering themselves most vulnerable to predation, and consequent loss to the spawning stock of the river.

There appears to be little or nothing that we can do about this, but at a time when salmon stocks are at historically low levels, drought years such as this are the exact opposite of what our salmon need to survive and spawn.

--00--

We have just returned from the Lochy, under Ben Nevis, and ok the river was low, but there was enough water for salmon/grilse to run in. Last year, at the same time, we were on the Awe. Earlier this year we went to the Deveron in Aberdeenshire.

In a total of 6 days on these 3 rivers, we might have seen 3 salmon jump in all the time there. All wonderful and prolific rivers in their prime, it is desperately sad to see them, running clean and clear as before, but without salmon in any numbers.

As the great Orri Vigfusson used to say, for successful salmon fishing, rivers need an abundance of fish.

The stark truth is that most UK salmon rivers now have no such abundance. That the Tweed may be comparatively better off than most others is self-evident, but it has still suffered a very significant percentage decline, certainly since 2013 but even more so since the 1960s-1980s. There is no room whatsoever for complacency.