By Andrew Douglas-Home

THERE is one thing that has bugged me for the last 60 years. It is illegal in Scotland to fish for migratory fish (salmon and sea trout) on a Sunday. You can fish for anything else; you can even fish for brown trout in the same river on a Sunday, but you cannot fish for salmon.

Even madder, we know now that sea trout and brown trout are the same species, identical, just that one goes to sea and the other does not. But you can fish for one on a Sunday but not the other. Sort that out, if you will, in a court of law. Here in the 2020s you can do almost everything else on a Sunday, but not the peaceful and contemplative pursuit of fishing for salmon. As they say in these parts, ‘It’s aye been.’ It is high time it changed, as it did just over the water in England, many moons ago.

On Thursday, 20 October, 1983, the Tweed had been flooding since the 16th, fishing impossible. My brother Simon and friend Simon Wood arrived from London, keen to be on the river. They tried on Thursday morning, but nothing doing. After lunch, the salmon “came on”. Between them, the Simons caught 14 salmon in the top two pools.

On Friday the river dropped further and was cleaner; the Simons caught 13, my father and younger brother Mark 3 each, and confined to the bank (the others took it in turns to fish and row each other in the boat) I caught one, making 20 salmon for the day all in the top Temple pool.

The next day the same team sharing, alternately rowing and fishing, caught 23 in total from the top two pools.

Then there was Sunday, the Sabbath, a non-salmon fishing day.

On Monday, the Simons had returned to London, I caught a 19lber before going to work, and my father rowed two friends who took it in turns to fish. They caught 26 salmon between them.

Good days such as these are incredibly rare on the river, and yet nobody had been able to fish, by law, on the Sunday.

Is it really sacrilegious to fish for salmon on a Sunday, but OK to fish for anything else? Where is the biblical authority for that? Are we sure that Peter and the other Disciples did not fish on a Sunday? What about the modern working man having only two days at the weekend to fish, and one of them being denied for no good reason? Of course, ghillies need to have days off, but then allow fishing on Sundays with a stipulation that ghillies and boatmen must be guaranteed a minimum of one day off during the working week, as is the case now but with extensive holidays during the off season. Where we are now in Scotland is absurd, without either secular or religious rationale for not salmon fishing on Sundays. But will anyone change it? I doubt it. It’s aye been.

A River Runs Through Me is published by Elliott & Thompson, out now