Fishing the Upper Tweed

The River Tweed is famous for its Salmon fishing, with people coming from all over the world to fish it. After three record breaking years (over 17,000 fish caught in 2008), the Tweed is the top river in Europe, and now ranks among the very top salmon rivers in the world.

The Tweed from a few miles above Peebles down to Selkirk is known as Upper Tweed, set in some of the best scenery in the country, the Upper Tweed offers some excellent Salmon fishing at very reasonable rates (£40-£100) compared to the prime beats lower down river which can be booked up year after year.

The best of Upper Tweed's salmon season is essentially only the months of September, October and November. This section of the river is very water dependant and if early autumn enjoys heavy rainfall, September will encourage some summer salmon and sea trout into Upper Tweed. Mid to late October will see good numbers of fish begin to appear through the beats, but November is traditionally the best month for this section of the river. To fish Upper Tweed during this month, offers the salmon angler an opportunity to fish pools that are quite simply alive with fish of all sizes.

There is a website dedicated to Tweed fishing (see sidebar), with details of beats, availablilty/prices and recent catch returns along with daily river levels.

The Tweed's fame as a salmon river has meant that it has often been ignored for its other types of fishing. This is quite wrong, as both its Brown Trout and Grayling fishing are excellent and provide good year round sport with some good sized fish (2lb+) regularly caught.

Article contributed by Alasdair Ash, Craiguart Bed & Breakfast