Some Tweed beats have reported good numbers of fish in the river, this Back-end. A good analogy to a prospective guest looking to book a 5* hotel before a lesser rated hotel, if given the same price, was made by a very experienced Bottom Tweed proprietor; i.e. the fact that the best holding water on the river is holding fish doesn't mean that the rest of the river is. Surely a sign of good numbers of fish in the river would be the lesser water being occupied by fish who couldn't find available lies in the better holding water. From my experience of the river, this Autumn, this is not the case, with many pools seemingly lying empty in late October and throughout November.
Rods have tried to put some figures on the situation but, as has been heavily covered following the Government's categorisation of rivers, catch returns are a pretty speculative way of estimating runs and their timing; however, if we're going to do so, the best we'll get is the top graph of this, courtesy of Fishpal:
Essentially, no noticeable change apart from significant numbers of fish that would normally run from August onwards just not showing up.
The one thing I'd add to this, to qualify the depressing effect of looking at this graph, is that we've still had lots of rods (including me this year) out on the river in October and November who didn't fish it as hard or at all in June or July. If greater numbers of fish are now running the Tweed in the Summer than normal, as was noticeable this season on the Tyne and Dee, then perhaps that will take time to become apparent in catch returns. You'd expect a few more to have been caught in June or July this year, though, if this was the case. I don't recall reports of large numbers of fish in the river then either.
Subjectively, and if we're basing things on catches, I got two Tweed fish this year and they were caught in May and June, respectively, although they were both springers. A bit of Summer fishing on usually un-fished water might be interesting next year. I've also heard suggestions that there should be experimental close-season fishing in December and January to see what comes up then.
Maybe the fish that apparently didn't show up when requested in October and November will show up next Spring (I think we said that last year); Or maybe they just ran the Thurso and Helmsdale because they couldn't be bothered swimming to the Tweed as their feeding grounds are getting further away; Or maybe they just got hoovered up by some fishermen somewhere who worked out where the back end run goes.
Further speculation is available upon request.
Further speculation is available upon request.
A 9lber going back at Middle Pavilion in June.
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