news/editorial

5 September 2021 News/Editorial

You are most probably as confused as the rest of us. After the comparative plenty that was 2020, what is going on here in 2021?

Variability in a wholly wild resource is to be expected, but this much? You will detect that I am worried. In a massive catchment with 15% of the whole of Scotland’s spawning area, will there be enough spawners to fully populate Tweed’s wonderful upland, and some not so upland, nursery streams?

Now, it is standard fare for concerns such as this, voiced by yours truly, to be treated as alarmist, but hear me out. Last year, even in the good year that was 2020, just 9 of the 230 caught here at the Lees after 1st September were fresh silver fish. Of those 9, only 2 were after 1st October. In other words, we were catching 90%+ old summer fish in September and October.

If the catches on the beats down by the tide, at present, are anything to go by, the prospects are not good for September and October 2021. I hear that fishers there are not only catching very little, they are not seeing anything either. Of course, there could be shoals and shoals of beautiful big fresh salmon, as of yore pre 2013, lurking out to sea, just waiting for some water to encourage them in, and when the rains do finally come, we will all be wondering what we were worrying about.

It would be a brave man to bet on that.

In the meantime, it is to be warmer next week as the wind shifts southerly, blowing in hot continental air, with some rain, but almost certainly not sufficient for a flood. Fishing is trying enough at the moment with that floating diaphanous and other weed attaching itself to your fly; if we get sun and heat, that could become worse. After that, there are mutterings of it becoming more unsettled as we move further into September. After more than 3 months of such mutterings, and no floods, the predictions will at some point be correct.

And then it will never stop raining.

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You may never have heard of the River Tana. It forms the northerly, round the corner, border between Norway and Finland. It is administered jointly by those two countries.

My only previous encounter with it was when I was researching if any Atlantic salmon river had ever caught more, by rod and line, than over 23,000 we caught here in 2010. The answer was that possibly not, but the only river which came anywhere near, and consistently near, was the River Tana. The blurb says that it catches/caught about 20% of all the salmon caught in the whole of Europe, by various methods, but that up to 50% of the 50,000-60,000 salmon caught some years were by anglers. It is a massive river, over 350km long, and with tributaries much the same size as the Tweed.

The shock news is that for 2021 it has been closed to all fishing. One report says that they have done this, a hugely dramatic step, because sonar soundings indicate that they had only 14,600 spawners last year. Amazingly, they carry out a stock assessment report every year, in great detail, and on the basis of the 2020 figures, they have shut the whole river down to netters and anglers, and everyone else wanting to catch a salmon. You can imagine the economic fallout from this.

So there we have it, a river that only a few years ago was by far the most prolific Atlantic salmon river on this side of the pond, has now been shut down for a full year because of concerns that salmon numbers are dangerously low.

A sobering thought for us as we contemplate what on earth is happening here on the Tweed and other Scottish rivers.

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The weights of the last 21 salmon caught here, this year, from 24th August to 3rd September 2021 are as follows:

12,5,7,4,5,9,4,8,5,3,4,15,4,10,4,7,8,5,6,4,3.

Of these, you would say that 13 are definitely grilse, 2 probably grilse, and 6 are salmon. Or over 70% grilse. Last year, in 2020, we caught 20 salmon between the 1st and 3rd September and their weights were as follows:

8,5,11,5,15,5,10,5,11,11,5,12,6,14,12,12,12,14,12,8.

Of these, you would say that 6 were grilse and the other 14 almost definitely salmon.

Or exactly 70% salmon.

Answers/ explanations on a postcard, please.