news/editorial

9 September 2018 News/Editorial

The Tweed rod catch last week was 224 salmon and 20 sea trout, bringing the season’s total to 8th September 2018 to 2,362 salmon and 431 sea trout.

Next Friday 14th September is the last day you can legally spin on the Tweed. For many of us the following day, 15th September, cannot come soon enough.

Those beats who have been spinning throughout the summer will be forced to discover that you can catch salmon on a fly.

Those ghillies and boatmen who have looked askance at some poor angler refusing to spin before 15th September (“You are wasting your time with that fly rod, sir, here’s a spinning rod with a flying condom, you just throw it upstream and reel it fast back down towards you”) will suddenly have to accept that fly fishing is the way to go....but only because they have no other option.

Those same ghillies and boatmen should know that many of their colleagues on other beats disapprove of what they do. Some would ban spinning altogether.

Much of the blame for this is because so many beats are comparatively uncontrolled by their owners, in terms of what goes on day to day on their beats. They appear to be happy that their ghillies and boatmen keep numbers up, with no regard as to how it is done….or who, either fishing later on the same side/beat or on the other side of the river, suffer as a result of their spinning obsession.

Thank heavens for 15th September and the consignment of those appalling Flying Cs, Rapalas and the like to their boxes for another year.

If only they would stay there forever.

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So those North East Drift nets and T&J nets stopped netting over a week ago on 31st August, and our only remaining net at Gardo will stop too on 14th September.

That only leaves the dolphins and seals to go on killing our salmon until we get a proper flood to persuade those fish, patiently waiting, to come in from the sea.

As fresh grilse and some salmon continued to appear in the lower beats last week, hopes remained intact for a better fishing autumn.

How much better remains to be seen.

We need both more “weather” and more fish, in short, a good old fashioned autumn. The odds are still stacked against....

.... but the bookies are just beginning to think of shortening the odds.

With the jetstream aimed straight at us throughout the week ahead, the chances of getting more “weather”, in the shape of wind, rain and cooler, as the week goes on, are pretty high....at which point it will, no doubt, never stop raining.

Such is the way of things with our climate nowadays.

As it switches from one extreme to another.