9 February 2014 News/Editorial
We are none the wiser after a week of the new season.
That any at all were caught is surprising, so high was it even in the few hours when it has been possible; the only saving grace that the colour goes quickly after every rise, but so far levels have been nowhere near a good fishing height.
It will stop raining sometime, but not in the week to come it seems.
In the run up to the start of the netting season on Tweed (15th February), even if very few of our nets now start until June, it might amuse to look back at the extent of netting now, as compared to 50 years ago in the 1960s, starting far away in Greenland and ending up at Coldstream.
Greenland and Faroes: 1960s, extensive commercial netting and longlining; now, subsistence only.
Rogue high seas trawlers: 1960s, unknown extent, but some; now, monitored by NASCO, Iceland and satellite, none.
Drift netting Scotland, England and Ireland: 1960s, massive (over 120 licencees off north east English coast alone) and impact hugely enhanced by switch from hemp to mono/multifilament (invisible to fish); now, Scottish drift netting banned in 1960s, 50 years before English drift net reduction buy out in 2003, now only 13 left and all to stop in 9 years time, Irish drift nets banned altogether.
Estuary and in-river nets: 1960s, over 30 working netting stations, coastal, estuarine and up to Coldstream, operating full time 15th February to 14th September, short week-end no-netting “slap” ; now, less than 5 nets, many part time, none further upstream than Paxton, most starting 15th June, extended 60 hour week-end slap.
In short, during the netting season in the 1960s and 1970s (until the big in-river net buy-out of 1987) it is a miracle that any salmon got through at all, and during low water in the summer, almost none did. Some netting stations used search lights on towers at night so that they could see the fish running up through the shallows before putting their nets in. It was a murderously efficient operation.
John Ashley Cooper in his books marvels at the ability of the Tweed to go on producing salmon despite the predation by nets before the salmon could get anywhere near the rod fishing beats.
It is no coincidence that the two biggest spikes in Tweed rod salmon catches came after the in-river net buy out in 1987 and then again after the north east drift net buy out in 2003.
One of the north east drift net skippers, bought out in 2003, is reported to have said he never once declared more that 1 in 7 of his true catch, not uncommon one would think, so terrified were they of the impact of the true catches becoming known, not unreasonably, when you consider what we now know as fact, that 75% of what they caught were Scottish, not English, fish.
No surprise then that when salmon carcass tagging for all Scottish net caught salmon was being mooted recently, hopefully soon to become law, the Scottish netting lobby was pushing for unnumbered tags. I wonder why? Of course, nothing whatever to do with unnumbered tags leading to (continuing) no control whatever over the number of salmon actually caught by the nets?
There is no love lost between the nets and the rods.
After the wonderful Spey had its worst salmon catch ever in 2013, SNFAS came out and said they would start netting and killing salmon from the very start of the 2014 season, a publicity own goal if ever there was one. I am told there are now 19,000 signatories, to Ian Gordon’s online petition, who think SNFAS may just have got it wrong.
There are those who think, in these days of millions and millions of tonnes of salmon being farmed, that killing a precious and diminishing wild salmon resource, by net and to be sold for food, is both unnecessary and indefensible. I have heard it here and from America, where their own Atlantic salmon are similarly under threat.
You might say that.
I could not possibly comment.
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