Salmon Netting on Tweed

Salmon netting was once a huge industry on the River Tweed. At its peak, there were 84 netting stations stretched along the banks of the river and the surrounding coastline. Now, only two netting stations remain operational on the river. One of these is at Paxton where, since 2015, the Tweed Foundation have been operating the netting station solely for conservation purposes, monitoring the adult Salmon and Sea trout returning to the Tweed.

Now, when fishing for either Salmon or Trout on the river, people tend to use a rod and line. However, go back just 100 years or so and netting was still a common practice in catching fish.

Over the years there have been various different methods and different types of net used to fish the river. As well as net and coble, two of the other main methods used were stell nets (stationary nets that were anchored down until fish swam into them) and ring/bob nets (also referred to as gill nets, these nets were designed to catch fish by their gills). However, these methods of fishing came to an end when all methods of netting (with the exception of net and coble) were deemed illegal when the Tweed act came in in 1857.

Net and coble fishing is therefore now the only legal form of netting carried out on the river.

Netting for Salmon and Sea trout has a rich history on Tweed.

The Pictish symbol stone depicting a Salmon, located on the banks of the Borthwick Water at Roberton, shows just how important Salmon must have been as a food source going all the way back to when humans first settled in the area after the Ice Age.

Records of netting for Salmon on the Tweed go back as far as the 12th century though, with Hallowstell (a coastal net fishery at Spittal) being fished in the early 1100's. Having still been fished in the 1990's, this gives the fishery at Hallowstell a recorded history of over 800 years!

By the 15th century, netting for Salmon had become a booming industry on Tweed. From the middle of the century, duties on Salmon fishing were being levied and the amount of Salmon (pickled at this time) being exported out of Berwick was growing; in 1461-2 only 13 barrels were exported when in 1478-9, only 17 years later, 971 barrels were exported.

The increase in the number of Salmon being caught resulted in the first recorded signs that the number of Salmon in the Tweed were in decline. This led to the earliest recorded example of Salmon conservation on the Tweed in the 1660's, when a penny a barrel was levied on all Salmon exported from Berwick in order to pay for the "keeping of the kipper and young fry".

By the end of the 18th century, it is thought that over 300 men were employed on the Salmon fisheries of Berwick. It is also around this time (1788) that the Salmon being exported from Berwick started to be packed in ice, bringing to an end the days of pickling the fish.

In 1807 the River Tweed Commission (RTC) was established before the Tweed Act was brought in in 1857. Around the same time, the Berwick Salmon Fishing Company (BSFC) owned or ran many of the fisheries on the river and in 1840 they started keeping records of the catches of all these fisheries. These records continued for almost 150 years until the company went out of business in 1981 after a drop off in the number of salmon being caught throughout the 1970's.

The closure of the BSFC in 1981 was closely followed by an organised buy-out of the in-river netting stations by the RTC in 1987. A further buy-out of the remaining large stations in the Estuary in 2000 and 2003 has left just five stations in operation – Cheswick and Goswick on the coast, Gardo in the estuary and Paxton and Canny (Norham Boathouse) between the Whiteadder and the Till.

Below you can see a map showing all of the known locations of past fisheries along the river and coastline. Signs of past fisheries can still be seen today, with many of the old fishing huts and shiels still standing along the banks of the river.

Only two of these fisheries are still operating, these being Gardo and Paxton. Paxton is not being run on a commercial basis however, instead being run by the Tweed Foundation as a monitoring tool for adult Salmon purely for conservation purposes.

Paxton was one of the last commercial fisheries on the river, when, in 2015, the Tweed Foundation formed a partnership with both Paxton House and the Purvis family to run the fishery solely for conservation purposes.  Now, any Salmon caught in the nets are quickly sampled before being returned to the river to continue their journey upstream.

Paxton netting station is run each year throughout the summer months, starting in June before finishing in September. Timing it with the correct tide conditions, the coble is rowed out and the net is set to capture fish as they swim upstream. The net is then pulled in and any caught fish are swiftly removed from the net and placed in a processing tub to be measured.

Paxton has proved an invaluable resource for monitoring adult Salmon and Seat trout returning to the river. Not only can we get an idea of how many fish are returning to the river and what size and age they are, but by monitoring how many of the tagged fish get caught again by anglers upstream we are able to monitor the exploitation rates of running Salmon by anglers.

Understanding the exploitation rates of the different runs of Salmon and Sea Trout throughout the year is important for the management of the Tweed as a fishery. If the proportion of tagged fish that are recaptured is high, then this tells a very different story compared to if the proportion is low, affecting how fishing should be regulated on the river throughout the year

The opportunity to sample returning adult Salmon and Sea Trout through netting at Paxton is one that is quite unique.   It has become an invaluable resource, helping us to monitor the health of the Tweed's returning Salmon and Sea Trout stocks and the information we gain from the sampling is integral in informing the best management practices for their respective fisheries on the river.