8 May 2022 News/Editorial
Fewer than 50 salmon caught on the Tweed last week, just as we had hoped things would improve, was disappointing. As ever, it is easy to blame the low water levels, but I hear that very little is being seen or caught in the lowest beats below Norham, which may indicate a more troubling reality, that just for now not much is in the sea to come in.
Forecasts predict a more unsettled week to come, but with everything wanting to grow, and with such dry ground after six weeks of quasi-drought, it will take some serious and consistent rain to make any appreciable difference to river water levels.
But we anglers are ever optimistic, and a windier and wetter spell of weather can do nothing but good, and nothing should detract from this spring’s salmon fishing season so far being a lot better than many in the recent past.
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With apologies for banging on about counting all June fish as springers, my kind correspondent asked how you can tell a springer from a summer fish in June? Of course, although I knew, in general, that it is all in the scale reading, the precise specifics had me stumped (something to do with narrowing/widening rings in the scales). As ever, my correspondent knew more about it than me!
Perhaps all one needs to know is that both the great Ronald Campbell and Marine Scotland believe that mid June is about as late as our springers come in, and that they base this on scale readings.
I am far from sure that my plea to count our springers only until 15th June, as opposed to 30th June, in order to better reflect reality, will get any traction. But you have to try.
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My Times newspaper under “Weather Eye” had a surprising piece on Friday all about temperature and our salmon rivers, pointing out that the Aberdeenshire Dee is ahead of the game (the Dee is especially prone to overheating) having already planted 250,000 saplings along tributaries and with a long term plan for a million more trees planted by 2035.
One hopes that the Tweed will soon be producing a similarly ambitious long term plan. It does not take Bill Gates and his pandemic prediction skills to know that, sooner than later, we will have a summer disaster here. Low water and air temperatures of 30c for a week would do untold damage to adult and juvenile fish alike. It is not if it will happen, simply when. The Atlantic salmon likes cold water; it can survive water temperatures in the low 70sF, it cannot when water heat exceeds 80F. Riparian tree planting is the only viable mitigation and we would be in dereliction of our duty to future generations (of fish and humans) if we do not get on with it; and now.
Warnings from the past are legion, even from decades before modern global warming.
Here are some newspaper extracts from summer 1959 (from my Godfather's Lees fishing book); “Never in living memory has the Tweed and its tributaries reached such a low level. At low tide the river mouth in Berwick resembles a huge mud flat and water is flowing through just two arches of the Old Bridge, which is unprecedented. Hundreds of dead fish are seen lying on the river’s edge and because of the extensive pollution, doctors have issued a public health warning against bathing. Fish can be seen lying at the side of the river, or in the water, completely overcome, and many hundreds have died in the last fortnight”
The 1950s was a cold decade compared to now, winters were proper winters, so just imagine how much worse it could be now if we get the perfect storm of heat and drought, even if 1959 was exceptional. My Godfather's comments including ”The finest, hottest and driest summer here since 1911 and over the country as a whole for over 200 years; the drought lasted until 18th October when there was a 4ft flood, and in the south of Scotland 1st January to 1st September was the driest 8 months since 1784”.
We have been warned.
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Whilst fishing at West Newbiggin, master angler and (ex) master butcher, David Foreman saw a little face in the river, paddling away. He pointed his rod at it and it grabbed a ride, clambering aboard the rod shaft. David brought it ashore and took it home, to build it up before re-releasing it into the wild.para It was a hedgehog, but why on earth was it swimming in the mighty (even in low water) Tweed? Running away from a badger, legging it from Scotland to England to escape Ms Sturgeon (not that Boris is any better), or had it fallen off a cliff?
If David keeps a fishing book, “one hedgehog” as the only fishing entry will most probably be unique.
Funny old game.
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