Final week’s preperation

June 16, 2009

Last week was an important week to try and square off all those little loose ends that needed sorting before the major push of the electro fishing season.  Which was “interupted” by a fishing and invertebrate workshop/competition in Wester Ross!

Monday I had to lias with the EA on exact location of Electro fishing sites to secure my consents to proceed and also to make sure that we weren’t surveying anywhere that might put protected species at risk.  I also purchased the hand held device and software for doing the recording in the field.  I also had a chat with Richard McIlwain the EA Fisheries Team Leader for our area.  I had heard rumours of him changing role and alas it is true.  He is leaving the position all be it on a temporary basis to cover for another change of job.  Richard has done a fantastic job in our region and we will be very sad to see him go.  His replacement (Jackie Swire) has been chosen and so we have agreed that before Richard leaves, during a hand over period, that we will sit down for a brew to chat to Jackie with Richard and myself and Stephen, to try and continue the strong links that we have forged with the fisheries team.

Tuesday we had a meeting with Philip and Dave Wilmot to discuss how we will take forward membership bosoting, fund raising and some other schemes.  I am pleased to announce something that we have been working on for many week:  We will be running a Catch and Release Badge Scheme for Salmon Starting from the 17th of June 2009.  An application form will be made available to download, which if you C&R a salmon you can fill in and send in with £2, and then at the end of the season we will send out the badges.  These will be small Lapel badges and I will put a page dedicated to this onto the website very soon.  We will also now be providing a membership pack for those who join the trust, we have no start date for this but all exisiting members will receive their’s with next years subs.  And finally we also will hopefully have a wild trout passport scheme in place for next season.  We have secured some nice small becks for fishing, and we now need to secure funding to set up the website.  More details to follow shortly.  These are projects we have been working on for months alongside everything else and it is nice to be able to finally announce them!!

Wednesday I went over to Pendle water with college students from Burnley college to undertake training in invertebrate sampling and walk over habitat surveys.  This was an excellent day and we as the trust have come away with some extra benefits in that we hope to use the students next year to help in maping habitat and invasive species accross our whole catchment.

Thursday was the Wester Ross Trust’s workshop, but I have run out of time this morning!!  So I will do a post for this before the end of the week.  Needless to say it was the most fantastic weekend!!

Posted by Charles Edward Poate | Filed Under Uncategorized 

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