news/editorial

8 June 2014 News/Editorial

I am indebted to another kind correspondent (I tried to e-mail my thanks but was rejected by some gremlin in the interweb thing) for pointing out Brian Clarke’s excellent article in The Times last Monday.

It was all about respect. He quoted an angler getting into the water with a shark he had just caught and released, but which was struggling to recover. The shark could have eaten him, but the angler’s respect for the fish he had caught compelled him to cradle it in his arms in the water until it could breathe gain.

An extreme example maybe, but of course he is right, at the root of any mishandling of fish caught, for photographing or otherwise, which you are going to return…..is both a lack of respect and a desperate casual thoughtlessness.

Maybe it is old age, but my instant concern, a split second after a salmon has been successfully secured, is to get it back into the water and see it swim away, allowing a magnificent wild creature to continue its epic journey.

There are those of you who will think I overdo the spiritual nature of fishing.

I make no apology for once again referring to Robert Nairac’s philosophy on fishing as portrayed by Luke Jennings “It’s not a question of wilfully making things harder, but of a purity of approach without which success has no meaning…..that the fiercest joy is to be a spectator of your own conduct and find no cause for complaint.”

At the bottom of all this must be respect, for the salmon, trout or sea trout or whatever you are trying to catch….and once you have caught it, if you are going to kill it, do so quickly and efficiently, if you are going to return it, treat it, for those vital few seconds after you have secured it, as if the only mission in your life is to save its life.

If you take it out of the water to photograph it…..or indeed take it out of the water at all if you do not have to, and the fish suffers as a consequence, worst of all it dies….then you should be ashamed of yourself.

We all know some fish die anyway because they are deep hooked, right down the throat and bleeding profusely, or in some rare instances of them being already dead, through some trauma, when landed……but to actually cause the death of a fish you should and could have saved ......well, with some allowance for inexperience, that is almost unforgiveable.

You go too far, I hear you say. Maybe, but most of you are like me and it is up to us to raise the bar, to show our disapproval of those who do it wrong.

I am most grateful to Fishtweed/Fishpal for including in their latest newsletter a similar caution about photographing fish and not taking them out of the water. If both they and us at Tweedbeats can, as far as possible because some will always slip through the net (!), not publish any new photographs of fish to be returned held far out of the water….then we might begin to change things.

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By way of lighter, but equally important, fare, The Tweed Foundation’s Auction is out http://www.tweedfoundation.org.uk/News/Auction/auction.html with a deadline for bids of 27^th June. Please do support this if you can; it gives a unique chance to get onto some beats which are otherwise pretty hard to get, and there is fishing from every part of the main river at all times of the autumn.

Bids are not as numerous as they were, so if you did bid you have a very good chance of success.

I hope I am not breaking too many confidences if I say that the late Lord Ridley was a huge supporter of the Tweed Foundation and a serial bidder for these lots; he loved the variety it gave him, and other friends and hangers on (I count myself amongst the latter) benefitted from his generosity.

I especially recall one memorable lunch at the Collingwood Arms with him and a very famous General and his wife, who were both delightful.

It would be nice if one of you out there would emulate Lord Ridley and go for multiple bids to support a really good cause.

And before my smart-arse friends point out that the Lees is notably absent from the list, I have already dealt through the good offices of a most generous and revered author, journalist and historian who has bought 2 days here, and the money safely lodged in the Tweed Foundation’s bank account.

Other beats do something similar, for instance you will not see the Junction there, but I will wager my bottom dollar that a copious donation from the owners will have winged its way to Drygrange.

The Foundation is lucky to have so many good benefactors.

But it needs them, so keep it going, please, if you can.