GOOD, BAD, UGLY
Michael Wigan reflects on September's rainy spell
By the time the rains finally hit the north Highlands it was mid-September. An angler who had just left, having tried to tickle fish from shrunken corners for one week, wailed in anguish to hear that his two successors on the beat nailed 21 in a day, and lost as many. More was to come. On the Halladale, horribly starved of the wet stuff all year, rain saw two young Scottish fishers notching up 26 one day.
There were injuries – after a week of this sort of thing men were in bed nursing shoulder trouble. One limping man declared he was ‘fished out’. Women anglers, less muscular in their approach, carried blithely on. One stood briefly on the banks of the Halladale and caught five without moving her feet. Short rod, floating line, small flies — while the men, wearing war-veteran expressions, projected weighted ironmongery on sunk leaders.
Strange things follow four-month droughts. A doctor fished for a 15 pound salmon in three rivers. Having winkled out four on an upper tributary he idly flicked his fly into a close-by burn in seething spate. He hooked up. The indignant salmon somersaulted down-river into the tributary. Chasing it beneath a water-gate and under a railway bridge the intrepid doctor carried on for hundreds of boulder-strewn yards until he stumbled into the main river. Here, to the amazement of beat anglers, the soaked figure netted his fish.
His wife told me the tale while the angler stood behind her, speechless, with a weirdly-glazed smile. He dwelt in a sort of salmon heaven.
Another man ventured across eight miles of moors and fished an Upper Brora tributary, un-fished normally being too far away. Here flowed a wide and beautiful wilderness river in full spate. He caught five in an hour and a half, the biggest played in the rushes on the swamped bank.
It has not been so dramatic everywhere. Spey ghillies were morose, even after salmon were caught on late-season higher water. They were convinced the migration had been poor. Feeling that this message and its significance for the spawning season were not being attended to, along with local salmon zealots, they hired a diving team to float the river at the top, middle and bottom. What the wet-suit divers and the underwater drone reported was alarming. In the worst pools there was a tenth of the fish expected. In others there was a third. Fishing hut talk was of re-stocking programmes, twinned with effective control of the sawbill ducks and cormorants which are decimating young salmon populations.
The Tweed, the home of probing salmon science, reports up to 80% of salmon smolts eaten by birds. Solutions, should anyone care, are easy. There is no need to go to sea or launch expensive research initiatives. It can be done by politicians willing to face down re-wilding zealots, exhibit belief in the value of wild salmon runs, and issue adequate bird cull licenses.
Not everywhere is epicene about protecting valuable species. On Norway’s north coast seals this summer were hammering salmon shoals in the drought-shrunk mouths of major rivers. A four-figure seal cull was conducted without further ado. Salmon rod catches vaulted upwards immediately afterwards.
Our own government has been caught on the hop by the worst wild salmon outrage in years. Early September events on Lewis’s River Blackwater annihilated any further discussion about whether salmon farm sea-lice can harm adult salmon. Clandestinely-filmed footage shows the heart of the wild salmon run succumbing to horrific parasite attacks in scenes like the night of the living dead. Hundreds of adult fish died. Now we know why government itself shrinks from this elementary investigation. They would then have to act.
Politicians will prevaricate over fish farm regulation, as ever, but finger-pointing debate can cease. If anyone still questions the effects of fish farming on wild salmon this gruesome underwater film removes all doubt.
“In the worst pools there was a tenth of the fish expected