6 March 2016 News/Editorial
As the middle/ lower beats bemoan another week’s fishing partially spoiled by rain, there was one unlikely beneficiary of the seemingly never ending deluge, the angler who caught a springer of 8lbs at Middle Ettrick, as reported on Fishtweed.
This is 10 miles or more higher up than you would expect at the beginning of March, Boleside being about as far as springers seem to go nowadays, until the first September flood comes along.
There will be doubters, but of one thing you can be sure, it is most unlikely to have been a kelt (the immediate refuge of doubters) in this year of all years, most kelts having long gone past Kelso and Coldstream, let alone Ettrick Bridge.
What is extraordinary, almost more than actually catching one, is why on earth was anybody even bothering to fish up there in early March?
It will be a story worth hearing.
On 19th February 1972 I caught 2 springers at Upper Pavilion, just below Boleside, and the “Remarks” column in my Smythson of Bond Street (what/where else?) book, marked simply “FISHING”, reads “Very early to be catching them up here. EDH (my father) caught 3 here yesterday. They got 46 at the Junction on the 15th.”
Different times.
That it will stop raining sometime is not in doubt, but final figures from the Aitchison family/Lochton (near Coldstream) weather station have confirmed that the 2015/16 winter was the wettest ever recorded here, being 14.61 inches, over 2.5 inches more than the next wettest, being rather oddly almost 100 years ago in 1916/17.
This 14.61 inches in just 3 months compares to the annual average of 25 inches, and the driest ever year of 1972 when we had just 16.21 inches in 12 months.
1916 (37.48 inches) was the wettest full year on record at Lochton, but the next 3 wettest have all been since the year 2000, and two of those (2008 and 2012) were over 36 inches.
This should be good news for fishermen, because one thing we do know for sure is that out and out drought (viz the last two Septembers) is death to good fishing.
One of these years we will have a flood/rise in water every two weeks, neither more nor less than that……..and that will provide just about perfect fishing conditions for almost all beats.
There were signs last week of springers appearing in more numbers and being reasonably widespread, and, if you believe the BBC weather website, as winds become more westerly next week and with no really damaging rain forecast, maybe, at last, things will settle down.
We need that Azores high to take charge for a while, weakening those rain bearing fronts and pushing them north.
Only then will we find out what sort of spring this is going to be for our Tweed salmon fishers.
The next 10 weeks to the end of May are, traditionally, the best of it.