Most Tweed Spring Salmon are 2.2 s - that is they have spent two winters in the River and two in the sea. Adding the Winter spent in the gravel as eggs makes these fish five years old. A Spring Salmon run is therefore spawned by the Spring Salmon of five years before, e.g. this year’s run was spawned by that of 2004, and that was spawned in turn by the run of 1999.

Spring Runs are measured twice by The Tweed Foundation: once as adults going through the Ettrick fish counter and again as the Abundance of Salmon fry in the Ettrick in September each year (the assumption being that most Ettrick fish are Spring fish).






This year’s Spring run comes from that of 2004 (in Green), which was counted as 3,934 fish.  While this was below the general average for a year (4,229 - excluding the low counts of 2007 & 2008), it was not greatly so.

This  run comes from the Fry measured in 2005 (also in Green), which averaged 24.31 per five minutes sampling effort. While this is also below the long term average of 28.17, it was not greatly so either.

Neither of these measurements give any reason for the low numbers of this year’s Spring catches therefore.

It must also be realised that the Spring run on Tweed is structurally “weaker” than on other rivers to the North because almost all our Spring Salmon are two Sea-Winter fish and so we have, effectively, only a single sea-age group coming into the River. Other rivers have significant numbers of three Sea-Winter fish as well and so are not as dependent on a single age class as we are. The more age classes in a  run, the structurally stronger it is as the events of any one single year cannot have an overwhelming effect.

The River Tweed Commission is therefore recommending, for this Spring in particular,
that as many Springers as possible (and preferably ALL)
ARE RETURNED, UNHARMED, TO THE WATER