news/editorial

6 August 2017 News/Editorial

I find myself in reflective mood, maybe because summer appears to be over and St Swithin is laughing in his grave…. or wherever else he might be.

As the August rains fall and the river goes up and down like a yo yo, with a permanently peaty dark colour, it is all very like last year. This means that when we get to the business end, September, it will dry up and that dreaded “Indian summer” will come along to give us warm sunny days when we fishermen least want them. The forecasters will say how lucky we are, and those of us wanting to get stuck into some serious salmon fishing, will curse both those trite forecasters and our own luck.

As for next week, cool with more rain/showers to start with, then maybe settling down with high pressure moving in for a day or two from midweek, but for how long?

Not long, I would think…….40 days from 15th July takes us to 24th August.

St S. says it will be cold and wet until then.

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One of the benefits of writing this weekly rubbish is that I get feedback, not much, but some.

It is all most welcome and interesting.

My old friend Simon Wood has just come back from the Lethen beat on the lovely Findhorn; they got 2 on the last day but saw very little, but what they did see was the odd flick of a silvery tail. The fish seemed to be in a hurry, not unlike here, where you might see the odd head and tail, but then nothing…….no resident weight of fish, or not that anyone can see.

Where are they all going and why the rush, you might ask?

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Then my fishing neighbour, John Lovett of Wark, sent me the Tyne (Riding Mill) fish counter numbers. June 2016 was 7,113 and June 2017 was 7,581 (salmon and sea trout), both of a different order to anything that had gone before, with the last 20 years showing a previous high of around 4,000 and a low of just a few 100.

If that is happening here too, where are all these fish? And if the main run has already come in (if you follow the argument that June and July is when they now come in), does that mean there will be nothing much more to come, like last year when very little fresh came in after the middle of August?

And what of the grilse? I see some of those northern rivers are now catching grilse, the Lower Beauly catching 17 one day, biggest 8lbs; likewise, the Dee is doing better than most, catching 23 one day with the biggest 8lbs……..so they must almost all be grilse?

Tweed is always later than them, but we have hardly seen a grilse.

So many questions, and, as yet, no answers about what is really happening to our salmon runs.

It is all very confused….and confusing.

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Another kind correspondent, Nick Craigs, tells me he attended a Salmon & Trout Conservation Trust meeting in Newcastle and that the Northumberland coastal salmon net fisheries are having their activities reviewed (the Net Limitation Order), a consultation has started and representations have to be in by November 2017.

It cannot have escaped anyone’s attention that, if the main salmon runs are now coming in June and July, the Northumberland drift and T&J nets are operating exactly when these main runs occur……...which in turn explains why they are catching so many fish.

This is, of course, iniquitous to most Scottish anglers and river managers, as these English nets admit they are catching up to 75% Scottish (most probably mainly Tweed) fish.

Will the current Net Limitation Order process finally get rid of these interceptory and indiscriminate nets?

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All of which brings me back to my reflective mood.

What, I wonder, would the late Orri Vigfusson have answered to that question?

Be in no doubt, as the main international advocate against all indiscriminate netting of wild Atlantic salmon, he would have said, indeed he often did say……….

……... that it should be stopped.

Now.