Berwick and Dist AA, Whiteadder fishing, Allanton

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Spinfish Angling Features

This matter has been resolved after lengthy negotiations salmon season tickets are once again available for 2009

The Berwick Angling Association Beat on the Whiteadder at Allanton

The following letter was published in the Berwickshire News and Berwick Advertiser on Thursday 5th of March, it has been well received by members and the public who agree that what BDAA has done is grossly unfair.

Dear Editor

I wondered if you were are aware that the 2008 salmon angling members of the Berwick and District Angling Association have lost their right to hold season permits for the Whiteadder. At an AGM, which I and many other members were not aware of, it was decided that the Association would no longer issue season tickets to local members. Instead, those present, I believe no more than 20 out of a total of 134 members, 15% of members (excluding the 24 juniors who are also affected), decided that only day tickets for salmon fishing will be issued in 2009 at a cost of £30 per day.

The grounds given for this motion were:

Ø Some anglers were too successful and the cost of the levy charged by the Tweed Commissioners was financially threatening to the club.

Ø The cost of a local ticket was considered to be far too cheap given comparable costs locally.

Ø There were issues about the number of anglers on the river at certain times and damage done by their passage.

Ø There were issues regarding vehicles parked at Allanton Bridge causing an obstruction.

Let me address these issues individually.

The purpose of an angling club or association is to provide members with value for money fishing where the members may not be in the position to afford private beats. It is a social club, anglers meeting by the river, sharing thoughts, theories and general blether.

As a consequence anglers do not expect the full 'trimmings' one would enjoy on a pricy private beat. Anglers expect to face a bit of congestion on popular pools which can be managed by simple rules allowing all anglers to fish through pools at a reasonable pace (cast and step).

It should not be a consideration that the fishing is too cheap. An association exists for the purpose of providing low cost angling, not for profit.

Last season was a success and many anglers enjoyed good fishing. High water brought fish through the system over the summer, an unmissable attraction for dedicated salmon anglers. Who can blame them, it is not often that the fishing is good and at times there were quite a few rods on the water. Never the less I am aware that anglers showed great restraint and conservation mindedness ensuring a significant proportion of fish were returned alive and well. Traffic on the banks did disturb the ground around popular spots however damage was due to the exceptional water conditions of near record high floods flattening bank side vegetation not the number of anglers. As to the total number of anglers I do not take issue with this, if we wanted (and could afford) a beat with low fishing pressure we would go private. For myself I enjoy club angling and take the rough with the smooth that is what happens on club waters all over the country, that is why they are so popular with anglers everywhere.

As to parking at Allanton Bridge, it would have been simple for the Association to designate the bridge and it's approaches a no parking area for members. Many clubs dictate where members can and cannot park.

The cost of the salmon levy has been stated as a cost which the club cannot bear as it is unfair to trout anglers. Feedback suggests that there are few trout only anglers in the Association (accounts do not in fact show any trout only anglers). From figures I have seen the club actually made a healthy surplus of over £5000 last season while increasing it's net assets to over £31,000.

The Berwick and District Association is not financially damaged by issuing salmon season tickets for locals, it in fact benefits significantly. The season ticket for locals last year cost £55 (£30 for senior citizens and £3 for juniors). This represents a real asset to residents in the borders and Berwick.

It has been estimated for 2009 that the Association could meet the costs of the new levy while returning a good surplus if the ticket price was increase to between £100 and £150 for a full season, February to November, while reducing the cost of a season trout ticket, maintaining the considerable discount for pensioners and juniors who need to be encouraged. It should be noted that senior and junior members are affected as well. While they will receive a discount on day tickets I believe it would cost a father and son £35 or so for one days fishing now as opposed to £58 for the whole season last year!

Achieving the budget as drafted would off course also require the Tweed Commissioners to give a discount on the levy comparable with the lesser status of the Whiteadder compared with the Tweed where rents are more than able to cover the cost of the levy.

Asking locals to pay £30 for a days fishing on what was once their club water is an outrage. ‘Former’ members cannot afford what a club should offer when paying £30 per day. Association members join because they want to be able to go fishing for an hour or two after work or on a day off without having to take out a mortgage to do so. They join clubs because it is affordable and local, a place where parents can take the kids, retired anglers can while away some time every day and ordinary members can unwind at their leisure without knocking a hole in hard pressed household budgets in these days of recession.

Charging £30 per day effectively excludes locals from their river, members who have come to depend on their Club over the years for their main or only source of angling pleasure.

This latest move has been met with disgust by most of the members. This latest move takes the Association away from the membership and effectively moves it into the ‘for profit’ private fisheries sector of which there are plenty in the area, a club run purely for profit with no consideration for the locals for whom and by whom it was establish. I would remind those responsible that a club or association is a mutual arrangement established for the benefit of the members and ‘not for profit’.

This recent action by the Association cannot stand. Associations or clubs are nothing without members, nothing if not run for the benefit of community. Taking such action in the absence of the vast majority of the membership is unacceptable. Taking such action without giving full, advance and transparent notice to the membership of the Associations intention is unacceptable. I call upon the Association to reconsider at the earliest and reverse the decision taken by a minority AGM.

Please feel free to contact me on this matters. There are many dissatisfied members from Duns down to Berwick some approaching their local MPs and MSPs and prospective candidates as well as council members. This effects communities across Berwickshire and Berwick, a vibrant club is an asset for locals and for local business. No one can understand the rationale behind this action, there was no hint of it, we in fact had hoped to see the members season ticket improved to a full year (Feb to Nov) so it came as a shock to find that we were no longer entitled to renew our membership at all. The club has effectively been taken away from those it was set up to support.

Hope you can use the above.

Yours faithfully

Alistair Huskie

The Berwick Angling Association Beat on the Whiteadder at Allanton

A few weeks before visiting Allanton I drove through Abbey St Bathan stopping to view the Whitadder, a fine looking river, I resolved to come back to try the fishing.

Whiteadder at Allanton Bridge As a tributary of the Tweed I had high hopes for the Whitadder as I set out for a day ticket visit to the Berwick and District Angling Association water at Allanton near Chirnside. Arriving at Allanton Bridge I pulled up to view the river where Whiteadder and Blackadder meet just above the bridge and much to my surprise found a much small water than I had viewed a few weeks earlier further upstream at Abbey St Bathans, never the less it looked very attractive. My main problem was however that I had brought my 9'6" Orvis and my 15 foot salmon rod. One look at the river made it certain that this was not a big rod water. What I had seen at Abbey St Bathans was a river running high and clear, by the time I got round to my trip the river had fallen back to a more refined size. The most you would want to use, even for salmon, would be a 10 foot rod.

I had gone to the Whiteadder to do some salmon fishing and the owner of a newsagents in Chirnside, a keen angler as it turned out, told me that some spingers had been taken that week, news that always gets the blood flowing a tad faster. His advice was to use small flies, 8s and 10s Ally Shrimp or Cascade even in spring, advice well worth taking. Having just bought two new lines I decided to put up the 15 footer just to test the lines using my Guideline rod (but that is another tale to tell) I also set up the Orvis with a dry medium olive and set off upstream. With a pair of Polaroids it was possible to see into the depths of the pools making sight fishing very feasible. The river was rarely more than 20 yards wide so my 9 foot 6 rod was more than sufficient to the task of covering the water. Many of the pools are clear of vegetation on at least one bank which makes casting easy. As wandered up stream I enjoyed the look of the river, nice streamy runs between decent pools suggested that dry fly or nymphing on a summers evening or night fishing for sea trout would be great fun.

A nice series of pools on the Whiteadder Spotting some rises in the head of a pool I cast the olive over some fish and was rewarded quickly with a take. A regretable take as it happens when a small fast fish slashed the fly and ended up foul hooked in the back. Worse still it wasn't a trout, it was a salmon smolt obviously keen to get a snack before dropping downstream to Berwick and the long dangerous sea journey that would occupy its life until, if it survived, it returned to Allanton as a fully fledged salmon. I cursed myself for casting to the rise because even gentle handling was prejudicial to its well being and I fear for the future of this game little fish. I moved on, picking up a couple more small trout before returning to Allanton Birdge where I chatted with a couple of visitors.

Both anglers had come up from Yorkshire for the day and decided to take season tickets, a bargain at £60 although it apparently only covers salmon fishing up to the end of the trout season, thereafter you are back to buying day tickets at £15 never the less as the lads said half a dozen visits and your quids in! They had ventured down stream to the lower extent of the beat finding some very good potential holding pools in which one of the visitors had a 'good pull'. We all agreed that the pool below the bridge was especially interesting, confirmed by a couple of local lads who had been 'hammering the water' all morning. I discovered from the local lads that the run on the right of the picture from the bridge pool was especially good for sea trout.

The bridge pool its self looked very good, deep holding water where some decent trout were showing as I chatted, off course by the time I stopped yakking and got down to the pool the good trout had stopped rising and all I got for my effort was an other small fish. I did see one substantial fish move just under the bridge and waited ten minutes in hope with my dry fly at the ready but he wasn't coming out to play.

Changing to a cast of two small salmon flies, silver stoat and cascade I moved off to fish the run. It was an easy wade but I suggest that you Spey cast during the summer because that sedge grass you see lining both banks (you see it as a creamy coloured strip) will make overhead casting frustrating in the summer.

I drew a blank as far a sizeable fish are concerned but learned enough to know that he quality of the fishing can be good for salmon and sea trout when the runs come in and there are some quality trout to be had. I will be back there is no doubt of that.

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