River levels dropping everywhere in the catchment now and although further rain s forecast looks unlikely to be a the same intensity as before.

In the meantime I came across this;    Worth repeating perhaps.
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How did we manage I wonder;

No carbon rods, just cane or Greenheart no fibreglass either for some time...
Silk lines or basic plastic double tapers only.
No Spey Lines, shooting heads, Skagits and all the other ‘aids’ you have today.
Gut casts and then unreliable ‘Luron’ monofilament, no copolymer or fluorocarbon.
Thin latex waders with leather brogues if you were lucky – no breathables, no neoprene’s, no hi tech underwear..
Sweaty plastic waterproofs or leaky stiff Barbour jackets if you were lucky.
No large arbours, mid arbours with high tech drags fit to stop a runaway train.
Just simple click check reels with braided backing- a Hardy if you were flush enough.
No multi pocketed waistcoats dripping with accessories just a priest, eeek- and a gaff eeek or tailer eeek!
Proper flies on handmade hooks with not a Willie Gunn, Ally’s shrimp or Templedog in sight but probably a Jock Scott, Thunder and Lightening or Black Doctor.
Mostly singles or doubles only, trebles for tubes or Waddington only.
No dreaded Flying Cs or Rapalas just a wooden or metal Devon Minnow or a Spoon with a spiral or Wye lead.
Perhaps –horror of horrors, even a bag or worms or a prawn or shrimp or two just for a change.
We mostly killed the fish we caught –that’s what we went fishing for and carried them away in a woven rush bass. And yes we even sold them sometimes either for ourselves or perhaps our employer.
We didn’t need to be told to put all coloured fish back especially near spawning time or to perhaps stop when we had caught what we needed. We didn’t have the PC police looking over our shoulders and be regulated out of existence. We did however have a proficient bailiff force- remember them - that did its job when required and prosecuted poachers and protected the fish on the redds and made sure we were fishing legally

We didn’t have to go to Russia or Iceland or Norway to catch our fish in satisfactory numbers and sizes.

We weren’t the problem for the angler, fishing in a legitimate way never is a threat to salmon populations I believe. All the problems came later – and we all know what many of these are and which are debated endlessly in forums or elsewhere.
You may think of us as old gits and dinosaurs but I bet you envy what we had then and suggest you look elsewhere for your scapegoats for our present demise, despite the high tech graphs which might suggest otherwise.

You can spend your life on the river, day in and day, year in year out but you see nothing, know nothing, have nothing worthwhile to say it seems  . Better believe the wet behind ears young fishery ‘scientists’ with their pre conceived ideas, theories, graphs and computer models.   See where that gets you.   Oh yes we are seeing just that!  The beginning of the end.