7 July 2019 News/Editorial
A low catch of 90 salmon and 78 sea trout last week was the inevitable result of running out of water. This brings the Tweed’s cumulative scores for the season, to 6th July, to 1,808 salmon and 728 sea trout.
As predicted, much of the success from midweek was below Coldstream, on the beats nearest the tide, with the exception of one or two small parties of fresh fish penetrating as far as Lower Birgham and Birgham Dub. Not much was caught above Kelso after Wednesday, a situation that may continue until we get water.
We should take some comfort from the inexactitude of meteorological predictions as to precisely where rain will fall. Students of these things will have noticed that, in the past, we often get a flood when it is least predicted. A slim hope maybe, but it is all we have.
Next week will certainly not be wall to wall sunshine, nor will it be more than averagely warm. Unsettled, yes, but unsettled enough for what the (now at summer level) river, and we salmon fishers, need?
Probably not, but time will tell.
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Have you noticed that when your friend(s) begin(s) to recount his/her/their tales of piscatorial derring-do to an audience, even to one of committed fellow anglers, it is not long before a communal glaze comes over the collective eye.
In other words, and if you can excuse the following somewhat sesquipedalian, if distinctly apt, description, fishing stories are excruciatingly, excoriatingly and, above all, gasconadingly tedious. Which is why, over the far too many years of writing this weekly dirge, I have avoided that particular trap.
Until now./
It is a symptom of current blog-block, an inevitability of these dog days of summer, that the golden rule “do not, whatever else you do, ever tell fishing stories” rather as Basil insisted “don’t mention the War”, is about to be broken, despite the aforesaid observation about eyes and glazing over.
On the rare occasion of actually catching a salmon this year, I had reason to enter the latest triumph in my beautiful, bound “Smythson of Bond Street”, need one say, book which just has “FISHING”, embossed in gold, of course, on its cover.
Which got me thinking.
Not, one hastens to add, how many salmon in total are in said Smythson’s book, a grossly vulgar and meaningless statistic, but rather, what were the best years?
Unsurprisingly, they were my gap year (1969) and the year after retiring from being a full time Chartered Accountant (2007). Yes I know 57 is young to retire, but you try sitting behind an accountant’s desk for more than 35 years. In other words, they were the two years immediately before and after serious work when most time was available to fish, the years since 2007 being increasingly filled with non-remunerative “work”, leading my so-supportive children to complain, “Why do you spend so much time doing things you don’t get paid for?” They had a point.
In 1969 I caught 70 salmon, and exactly 100 salmon in 2007, the last a 16lb sea llced cock on 26th November to reach the ton. Of the 1969 total of 70, 45 were caught on a fly, the rest on a mixture of toby spoons, black and gold/yellow belly minnows and prawns (we did it all in those days). In 2007, all 100 were caught on a fly.
The best individual days were also all on a fly, 14 and 12 in 1969, and 10, 9 and 8 in 2007.
The 14 (with 4 more pulls and losses) in 1969 were caught on 15th September at Upper Pavilion, for those that know it, 11 of them in the Brigend alone, and all on a greased, now floating) line. The flies were all size 8 doubles, a Blue Charm catching 8, Hairy Mary 4 and Jeannie 2, ending with the Jeannie, its predecessors having disintegrated from being overly mauled.
And there was I thinking that salmon only take a Cascade, Junction Shrimp or a Snelder/Snaelda (whatever that is), none of which existed in 1969. We were none the worse for it, indeed the romance of those old (great) fly names has gone. For good, you would think.
By way of a minor diversion, I recall going to the wonderful Knockando on the Spey in the late 1970s, when everyone used a Munro Killer. I found a rather fetching Silver Wilkinson double lurking, or possibly skulking, in my fly box. To the derision of fellow guests and the ghillies, I insisted on fishing with it. Well, you can guess the rest, the salmon thought, like me, that it was compellingly attractive, to which my graceless, know-ally friends muttered “lucky” or “ it won’t happen again”. Such losers.
Back to the business in hand (still awake?).
Of the 70 fish in 1969, I would doubt if any were released/returned, there was certainly no mention of it in my “Comments” column.
Of the 2007 100, maybe 10 were killed, maybe not, the following comments being typical. Of the 8 caught on 15th September “Kept the 14 lb fresh cock, all the others returned” and of the 9 caught on 21st September “ All returned, roughly half sea liced and half older river fish”.
How times changed over those 38 years. Boo!!
You can wake up now.
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The photograph at the top of the page is something to gladden your heart, to finish on a high. (Click on photo to see the whole fish)
Over 45 lbs of pure glory and muscle from the amazing Norwegain Alta caught (and released) last week, one of (just) 3 caught the same week weighing over 45lbs.
The stuff of dreams, and in these days of near universal gloom in the salmon fishing world, a truly wonderful sight.
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