End of 2017 draws curtain on poor season

As the old year drew to a close, there was a feeling of an anticlimax.

There had been several days of bitterly cold weather, which made travel difficult.

The new anglers, who reached the river, found ice growing out from the banks.

Some people said there appeared to be a thickness to the water, which they took to mean that even the flowing water was on the point of freezing.

A warm front then passed over the country. There was enough rain to thaw out the ice in the high hills, and the result of this was that the river rose and turned a dirty shade of brown.

Hardly anyone was even attempting to fish for grayling, and bailiffs were able to spend their time concentrating on the search for salmon redds.

A small number of fish were seen moving, but the water was too discoloured for spawning activity to be seen.

When the river level drops again, clean patches on the gravel beds should indicate where eggs have been laid.

Not all such areas will be clearly visible and many of the places, where the gravel has been disturbed, could be playing host to the eggs of several pairs of salmon.

Early in the summer the presence of large numbers of salmon parr will indicate the level of success in this spawning season.

Perhaps, due to the weather, the number of salmon anglers last year was slightly down on that of the year before; because of this, the number of salmon caught was also down.

This information was being gathered at the same time as the Scottish Government announced their intention to promote the Clyde from a perfectly acceptable Category 2 classification to an unnecessary Category 1.

What this suggests is that the Government’s advisors have accepted that our clubs and associations have been doing a good job, in the interests of conservation.

The intention is to stick with the successful policy of issuing three carcass tags with every season permit sold.

This might appear to be excessive, but very few of the Clyde’s anglers kill any of the salmon that they catch and, as far as I can see, nobody kills all three of the fish that they are entitled to.

Compared with other rivers, anglers on the Clyde are better at sending back their catch returns.

This is important, because the Government uses the information in these to determine what a river’s classification ought to be.

Personally, I do not understand how a single year’s data can justify a change of classification when it takes four or five years to see any change in the health of a river’s salmon population.

Holding onto the option to change categorisation, every year, introduces an unnecessary uncertainty when it comes to planning for the future. We are looking at salmon rivers, not negotiating Brexit.

Grayling anglers should have been enjoying their sport at its peak in December, but were not.

During the coldest conditions, which lasted for several days, it was not possible to catch a fly or nymph in the normal streams, where we expect grayling to be, because the spreading ice sheet was getting in the way.

Those who tried to use open-faced reels and floats, whether using artificial flies or natural baits such as maggots or worms, complained that the rings on their rod rings were freeing up.

Once the temperature started to rise, the colour of the water was probably making it difficult, if not impossible, for the grayling to see what was being presented to them.

It has often been suggested that the fish were discouraged from feeding in the prevailing conditions.

The absence of reports of grayling being caught might also be because only a few anglers were braving the conditions.

Another explanation could be that the few days of hard frost were followed by an extremely mild spell.

This is not what the grayling expected.