news/editorial

6 March 2022 News/Editorial

With some 50-60 salmon caught (hard to be precise with Junction and Sprouston still absent), it was a better week, even with conditions far from perfect.

The forecast is reasonably benign for the first half of next week, so that water levels should be both settled and lower. Only then may we get some idea of the numbers in the river.

But it is undeniably encouraging.

I still harbour unreasoned resentment that in the lockdown spring of 2020 we were not allowed to fish, even when lucky folk like yours truly only had to step out of their front door to fish, the most solitary and distant (from infection) sport you can imagine.

The nadir of this resentment was one glorious April morning (every morning was glorious that April) when we were playing all sorts of silly “castle building” and “stone throwing” games with my children and grandchildren (we were bubbled together for 10 weeks; I know!) on the shingle at the Learmouth Stream. I counted 12 salmon jumping far up in the stream, just where you were almost certain to catch one or two.

By the time we were allowed to fish in late May, those fish were long gone. Luckily, more had taken their places, but it still rankles.

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The embargo on fish catch numbers information for 2021 is almost off. In the past the RTC would have issued a press release with the numbers just before the AGM; maybe that has been done, maybe not, but in case not, my lips are sealed. All will be revealed at the RTC AGM tomorrow (Monday) morning.

What I can say is that the catches are wholly predictable and therefore, as expected, not good. Rod fishing conditions in the summer were poor, but never mind, the underlying cause was lack of fish. Those same conditions could hardly have been better for the one remaining in-river net at Gardo, so that excuses about fishing conditions are reversed, they were entirely favourable.

Yet the net catch was also disappointing, as were the numbers of those caught in the research netting station at Paxton, more evidence that the numbers just were not there.

Paul Hume, long standing and loyal boatman here over many years, tells me that when he was fishing at the Hallowstell net, just below Gardo on the beach, on one tide on one day, in the early 1990s, they caught 50 % more than Gardo caught in 5 ½ months in 2021.

That says it all.

Some are guilty of shifting baselines. We are becoming used to mediocrity, or even worse, in salmon numbers. Let us hope that 2022 exceeds our expectations; in every way.