Tweed kelt

I sneaked away for a couple of days on the Tweed at the end of last week but had nothing to show for it. The tattiest kelt took my lure but there didn't seem to be many fresh fish coming through. Still a kelt will do just fine for some.

All the same, it was beautiful sunny weather on Friday, wading the river below the bridge in the aptly named town of Coldstream. It's why people go winter fishing.

I was fishing the lower Tweed Lennel beat that is owned by a fishing syndicate. The original syndicate bought it for about £38,000 nearly 40 years ago. A 24th share was sold last year for £160,000, valuing the beat today at more than £3.8m, a multiple of 100 during the lifetime of the syndicate. So it hasn't been a bad little investment.

The syndicate members divide their time so they have two days a month on the river. That's fine for people living in the north but it's a heck of a drag from the south for just two days.

There is another opinion, however, as my fishing companion pointed out, that anyone who has to run a business can take a couple of days without it interfering too much with their work. Another advantage of the system is that people get the chance to fish the river in all weathers, when the fish are running in numbers in October and when they are not in....er, February.

Being a Borders river it's easy to insult your Scottish-sounding ghillie by calling him a Scot when it turns out he was born in England. Equally I got it wrong with another ghillie who I thought must be English. "Och no," he said. "I'm six miles Scottish and my wife's a hundred yards English." These things matter.