Another Season comes to an end and it will be one that many will want to forget. The drought extended from late April until mid-September. The catches from the Private Beat are over 50% down on last year but Beat One was somewhat rescued in September with fish entering the lower reaches and they ended up taking their ten year average. There has been much speculation as to whether the huge gathering of fish that were waiting in the Estuary for so long would still be around to run the river or had they headed back out to sea. The absolute truth is that we will not know until the fish are on the redds and then it will be possible to make that judgement. On the very positive side, a friend of mine was fishing Beat One on the last day of the Season and he lost, at the net a silver fish of about fifteen pounds. Whilst he was playing this fish he witnessed a lot of very fresh fish running through. This chap has fished the Beat One since he was a kid and is not one given to "fishy stories". I think that the initial rises in water levels gave us very coloured and rather poor quality water but now that it has settled off, I think that our fish will be steaming in.