7 May 2017 News/Editorial
The Tweed angling community reacted in horror and shock on hearing that Gardo net caught and killed 18 spring salmon in one day, on Monday last week.
Most are as stunned at the callous disregard for the most basic conservation principles, as they are at the determination of Gardo to go against all scientific advice, which is that it is unsustainable to kill any of our scarce spring salmon.
It is often forgotten that every one of those 100s of Tweed salmon anglers, who fish in the spring every year, do not kill any salmon until 1st July even though legally, just like the nets, they can do so after 1st April. Anglers have deliberately killed no fish at all now for the last 7 years, voluntarily, and I have never heard of a single angler in all that time breaking this voluntary code.
Nor has there ever been any question of these 100s of anglers, who have given up their legal right to kill, receiving any compensation for never being able to go away from the river with the fish they catch.
It remains to be seen how this will all play out, but there is now some even more steely determination by those of us who have spent most of our lives trying to protect our springers that this one netting station, flouting all generally accepted conservation principles that you only harvest from a surplus, will never be able to do this again.
One hopes that the food industry reacts just as we anglers have, in horror, and refuses to buy Gardo’s fish, because the salmon they kill do not come from a sustainable source.
The Berwick Harbour Commissioners, Michael Hindhaugh (the lessee) and Gardo may think they are being clever, that they are right and everyone else is wrong, but it is a long game.
Last Monday’s killing of 18 precious spring salmon just could be their biggest mistake.
The river Tweed, and its all important fish, now face the future minus those 18 salmon, which will never spawn, and minus however many more Gardo kill between now and 16th June.
It is a grim and depressing prospect.
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As the river quietly disappears, anglers will not be surprised to hear that April 2017 was the driest since April 1984, and the fifth driest since the Aitchison family at Lochton, just outside Birgham, started keeping daily records in 1903. I am indebted to them for letting me have their figures.
Less than ½ inch (or 9 mm in new money) fell in April.
With no substantial rain in any forecast until at least next weekend, fishing will be confined to the tops of streams, and maybe even early mornings and late evenings. Despite that nagging cold May easterly wind, when the sun shines through, out of a clear blue sky, any chance of successful fishing tends to die with it when the water is so low.
You may not want it, or as anglers we may, but the longer this spring drought goes on, the more the smart money must be on a pretty wet summer.
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Some who read last week’s effort managed to persuade themselves that I think goosanders, cormorants and seals do no harm.
Nothing could be further from the truth. From the salmon’s point of view, it would be a good thing if the population of things that eat them were reduced to zero (even if that is never going to happen, cue Greenpeace, every sort of twitcher, seal-hugger et al).
What I was trying to say is that the difference between a good year and a bad one cannot be blamed wholly on these things, because the evidence is that these predator numbers are pretty consistent, ergo the damage they do is also pretty consistent.
And for those who still put all their faith in a hatchery, why not read the EA study I referred to which said that 97%+ of the Tyne rod catch comes from non-hatchery bred salmon?
You may not want to believe it….. but that is another matter.
And if you want to see for yourself the sheer, explosive volume of juvenile salmon in the Tweed system, why not go electrofishing with the Tweed Foundation this summer/ early autumn?
If you do, I will bet you…….
…... that you will never talk about having a hatchery here again.
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