River Tweed Fishing Report Monday 22nd to Saturday 27th July

The opportunity seldom arises for an unqualified upbeat report. This is one such. The online scoring last week via Tweedbeats and Fishtweed, if the old abacus is in mid-season form, was 261 salmon and 46 sea trout. Add to that all the non-online reporters (eg Lennel alone had 11 on Saturday), whereas the previous best week, 2 weeks ago, might have exceeded 250 salmon, it would be surprising if the real score last week was any less than 350 salmon. 

Reports of masses of salmon/grilse running in off the tides are encouraging. The immediate weather looks like producing summer, for the first time this year. It may not be prolonged, but could heat the water and put the fish off, especially if the sun blazes down. By next weekend, it seems, if you believe the medium-term prognosticators, normal service, in terms of this cool and showery summer, may be resumed.

Lower River 

Anglers fishing Tweedhill, Horncliffe and Pedwell caught 20 fish. Gary Hillary at Hornclife reports by Thursday the weather was overcast and the river had fallen to 1 foot 1” on the gauge. During the next few days rods caught fish, successful flies: Tyne Toucan, Willie Gunn, Red Francis, Kitchen Sink, Cascade. 

Boathouse and Canny: Charlie Brownlow reports the week started with a fair bit of colour, and a pulse of water on Tuesday which dirtied it up again. However, everything started to settle by Wednesday and a guest caught our first sea trout on the fly. The second half of the week saw a few fish at the bottom of the beat waiting to come through. We are looking forward to next week.

Lennel: A very good day for us on Saturday with a mixture of salmon and grilse, one landed was sea-liced, a lot of offers and takes during the day. River up a little bit again today and holding some colour again. Saturday's catches take their July so far to 54 salmon and 6 sea trout.

Tillmouth: Willie Elliot reports, a good week with 32 salmon and grilse, with most of the fish arriving into our stretch daily.  We are catching some outstanding double-figured salmon in the high teens. Good numbers of grilse were seen travelling through the beat towards the later part of the week, the river had cooled down, cloud cover and westerly winds. On Saturday morning, Willie’s son, Ryan, caught his first grilse on the fly, a bar of silver covered in sea lice. Ryan was buzzing and Dad was very proud. There’s been a lot of big salmon coming in during the last five weeks, and a potential that this year is going to be a big salmon year, let's hope the rain does not spoil the fishing in Autumn. 

West Learmouth: Dean reports the river was unsettled at the start of the week and settled down towards the latter part. Fish have been showing throughout the day, with increased action at certain times. The 2 rod beat finished on 6 fish up to 13lb, including a fresh grilse, on the fly and spinner.

Lees: Finished the week on 19 fish. Thank you to Andrew Douglas-Home for the excellent weekly fishing report he writes for Tweed Beats. The first two paragraphs of this week's fishing report must be credited to Andrew. You can read his latest report here: 

Carham: At the start of the week (Mon and Tues) we had a couple of small dirty lifts of water, which took the level on the Carham gauge up over 1' again. These lifts came from the Teviot and were not helpful on those days, but helped us later in the week. On Wednesday the Carham gauge was bang on 1' and temperature 62f. The water had cleared nicely and we managed 2 salmon and 2 grilse for the day on a mixture of fly and spinner. Thursday, we were down to 8" and 62f again, colour was looking better, again we managed 1 salmon, 2 grilse and a sea trout, we also lost a couple of fish and had a few other pulls. Friday we were down to 7" and still at 62f. We ended up with 2 salmon, another 2 fish lost and another few pulls. Saturday we were back up to 8" and 63f. We landed 1 salmon and 2 grilse for the day. There were small pulses of fish moving through the beat again randomly all week. Most of the fish were fresh, however we did catch a couple of older fish at the end of the week.

Hendersyde: John Kitchingham reports a week of two halves with the river holding colour. A frustrating start to the week and then some great sport at the end of the week. Rods, Jonny Wish and his son Jack (12 years) landed 10 salmon and 3 sea trout for their 3 days. All on fly. The highlight of their trip was young Jack landing his first salmon on Thursday at 7lb and landing fish the next 2 days as well as losing a few more, a good reward for his effort, and a fine fisherman in the making. The beat ended the week with 12 salmon, biggest at 18 pound and 4 good-sized sea trout. Fish were mostly fresh and some carrying sea-lice. Rods used floating lines and the top fly was a Cascade size 8.

Junction: Simon Cotton's guests fished Junction for three days and writes Frank was the top rod with 8 out of the 14 fish landed. Tony Fawcet caught the largest at 18lb approx. Max Smith lost an absolute cracker of a fish after 15 minutes. The fish stripped 100 metres or more of line off his reel on the 3rd run! 

Trout Fishing: Ronnie Glass reports some good catches on nymph tactics in fast shallow water. Mostly grayling but a few decent trout too. Very encouraging, as we are entering the stage of the season which, in a normal year, would be regarded as the “dog days” when the heat finally slows down feeding activity.

Middle River

Bemersyde: Ian Farr reports two salmon and a sea trout on a Monday and another fresh fish on Thursday about 12/13lb. The river has now dropped. The beat is enjoying its best season so far for quite a few years. There was a lot of water in the Spring and Summer which encouraged fish to move. Anglers have caught some nice fresh fish, including some carrying sea-lice. The beat is featured in this month's Trout & Salmon magazine 

Tweedswood: Phil Ellis reports 5 salmon and 2 sea trout for the week plus many fish lost! Sean Dodd caught his first ever salmon, a great result in what was a tricky day, with fish showing, but not takngs. 

Boleside: Garry Cross reports, 5 salmon and 3 sea trout this week. Much more of a typical summer week.  A quieter week with rods, but still managed some action when people gave it a go. Even the ghillie managed to charm one out. From Friday onwards we started to see more sea trout in the beat. Flies: dressed doubles, small light conehead tubes. Cascade and Willie Gunn coming to the rescue. Short intermediate lines.

Upper River

Fairnilee: Mark reports the beat fished well in June, with some lovely fish caught. The river is now down to summer levels, we could do with more rain now to move some more fish through the system but still nice to catch fish this early. The beat normally fishes well from September through to mid-November

Horsbrugh: Kenny Annand. The beat was not fished last week due to low levels. We are desperately needing some proper rain to move fish and to awaken the residents. However, despite the low levels, it was encouraging to see Kailzie, just above us, getting a fish mid-week. It’s great to see fish so well spread out the system this year. Every lift in water levels will keep moving fish forward. I am very confident this will prove to be a good year for us, once the big numbers of fish start to arrive. 

Kailzie Trout Fishery and River:  Connor reports, the fly pond has picked up during the last week with buzzers/nymphs and orange blobs doing well. The trout are also feeding heavily on drys at the moment. Bait pond is also fishing well. Congratulations to Jack one of our junior anglers who caught the tagged tiger trout, which won him a new fishing kit. On the river, we caught our first salmon of the season on Tuesday at 5lb. There has been a fair few sea trout and salmon lost since then. Brown trout fishing has also been good in the evenings, but quiet throughout the day.

Tweed Tributaries 

River Till at Tiptoe: Lucy Carroll reports, Monday 22nd July, Mike Turner caught and returned a 3lb Sea Trout and a 3.5 lb grilse, both in The Mile Marker Pool (Pool 3). After the rain on Tuesday 23rd the water was up, Iain McLeod had some success and caught 5 sea trout ranging from 2lbs to 8lbs, in The Long Flats Pool (Pool 1) and The Mile Marker Pool (Pool 2). Iain also caught and returned 7 small brown trout. Revd. Brian Hunt caught and returned a 5 lb Grilse and on Wednesday 24th Brian caught and returned another 2.5 lb grilse. Richard Beesley caught and returned a 1lb sea trout in Tiptoe Throat Pool (Pool 4)

Whiteadder BDAA Water: Jamie Moorhead reports a quiet week. Three fish were reported, two were fresh bars of silver around 5 or 6lb caught by Graham using a 3wt nymph rod. Although the river is low, there are still fresh salmon and sea trout being reported. Anglers are enjoying some excellent brown trout fishing into the evenings with gnats & F flies have been doing well for trout. 

Latest Catches 

Thank you to the boatmen, ghillies and anglers for your fishing reports. Please keep emailing your fishing news to anne@tweedfoundation.org.uk  

Best wishes

Anne

The Tweed Foundation Annual Auction will go live in November. If you would like to donate an auction lot to support the work of the foundation and education program, TweedStart, please email anne@tweedfoundation.org.uk

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