The Weather oh the weather
July 31, 2009
Well I had hoped that the week before I went on holiday that I would able to catch up, and get back on schedule with the electro fishing surveys. Seemingly the weather had other ideas! Monday we managed to get out and got 6 electro fishing surveys done, our first on the Hodder of 2009. Tuesday we did a quantitative survey on Greystonely Brook, which turned out great results, and a surprise Herling! This was matched by the EA electro fishing team who also found a Herling the same day, but further up Greystonely. A talk with Andy Croft confirmed what I have been hearing, that our Herling run (Sea trout of 0.5lb upto about 1.5lb) this year is one of the best in recent times. However they seem to be making life hard for us anglers as there numbers do not match the willingness to take a fly!
Wednesday we had had the lovely over night showers that had pushed the Hodder and the main river up, and most of the side becks to an surveyable level. This was really irritating, but it did mean that a few salmon were caught by anglers and we received another application for one our catch and release badges! I took Thursday off with the thought that it would be to high to survey but just right for fishing, what a mistake, the river looked to be running 2 foot 10 and very coloured. However Friday (Today) when I’m back in the office, the river is perfect and my visit to West Bradford Bridge earlier meant that I had to watch many other anglers actually getting to wet their line! So both wednesday and today have been spent shifting paper work, and as I type, the website is having a small update, with new info on Invasive species, commercial fisheries, and photos & videos going up.
I can’t complain about being stuck in the office though, as I have managed to wrangle a weeks holiday in scotland where I plan to fish as near as I can to 24 – 7!! This means no Blog next week, and just a short blog the following week, hopefully making you jealous of the wonderful Holiday I have planned!!
Lower Ribble Surprises
July 29, 2009
Well anyone reading my blog regularly will realise that I can’t stand still for long, I always feel happier when I’m upto my eye balls in work. However it has gotten over my head, and hence the delayed blog this week! That said this blasted rain has given me a chance to catch up. We have now completed 104 surveys out of a targetted 309. I would be pleased with this but for the forecast of another wet wet August, which will make it difficult to get any way towards the 309 surveys.
Monday of last week was a little different – in terms of electro fishing. Stephen and I headed to Downham to do a repeat survey on Downham Brook (to confirm no trout were present). We then did a huge quantitative survey on Ings Beck. A proportion of the trout fry were retained (150) and then released into Downham Brook. We hope to repeat this for a further two seasons, and that this will be enough to provide a self sustaining trout population back into a beck that used to hold them.
Tuesday was a standard Survey day with 6 sites covered, but the turn up for the books was that we found salmon fry in Lambing Clough, making this the lowest spawning brook (well the lowest with evidence of spawning) above the tidal limit. The brook is absolutely ideal and provides excellent habitat.
Wednesday we were out on Park Brook. This lovely brook has the typical characteristic of many names; it starts in Parsonage Res. and is Showley Brook, before becoming Dinckley Brook, before becoming Park Brook, and I’m sure I missed some out! We found incredibly good numbers of trout directly below Wilpshire, which then dwindled, but we picked up a salmon fry above Brockhall Village. This Beck used to be fished for autumn salmon over 20 years ago, but steady pollution has caused it’s population to near vanish. I used to live near it and despite regular walks with the dog I never saw an adult salmonid. But they are there, and Grant Talbot (EA Fisheries officer) and I plan to have a long hard look at this beck to see what we can do to bring it into order.
Thursday we did a quantitative on Boyces Brook at Ribchester, this obtained and A grade for trout fry and turned up a Herling less than 48 hours out of the sea. It was incredible to see the herling well into the small becks this early, as last year we didn’t see any until September.
Friday the Weather almost got the Better of us, but we did manage one survey on Chatburn Brook just as you come out of the Village. Would you believe it, we found salmon fry! I almost fell over, we walked this brook last winter and were convinced that at best only sea trout would get to the first impassable weir in the Village as it is small and steep just above the confluence with the Ribble, but it just goes to show the tenacity of salmon on a mission!!
Calder surveys finished, Ribble beginnings
July 20, 2009
Last week felt like one of the longest weeks I’ve had in quite some time, not through lack of enjoyment, but so much done, with more left to do. I hadn’t seen Philip in a while, so rather than leave the office at 8 to get surveying we delayed surveying till after he had been in for our normal meeting. Much was discussed as there is a huge amount going on both front and back of house so to speak. After Philip left, Emma Thompson of the EA popped in to discuss where we were going with our Signal Crayfish project. It was a good meeting and certainly helped to focus the mind on the project direction. Our work so far has been very positive, but we still lack true hard data as to the effectiveness. So we are planning a session in August to ascertain the true effectiveness of the equipment in it’s current form – if it’s not as effective as we would like now, it can always be improved. However funding is becoming an issue as this is time consuming work.
After the meeting I headed out with Brad and we completed our Sabden surveys, and moved onto the Hyndburn, were to my amazement, we found Salmon fry, in relatively good numbers. This was in contrast to no salmonid fry at all last year. I hope that the water quality remains high and fish continue to spawn here as until Padiham weir is made passable there is very limited amounts of habitat available to Calder Salmon.
At 4 p.m. we headed to Nelson to meet with Lee Collins of the EA to look at a pollution incident I reported a week or so ago. We immediately found it, and Lee pulled up the drainage map on his lap top and was able to identify that there was sewage coming out of a surface water pipe. In most circumstances this occurs when foul drains are misconnected, either through ignorance or laziness. Lee got onto UU who came out and were working on the problem until 10:00p.m. that night, they discovered the cause, a blocked screen causing overflow from foul into surface drains, and cleared it. There will be more follow up work to make sure that the connection between the drains is severed so that even if the screen blocks it will never happen again – this is a good result!
Tuesday we completed the last of the Calder surveys, with a Quantitative survey on Pendle water and two surveys on Bushburn. Bushburn was a disappointment but Pendle was an improvement on last year, including a Brown trout of near 40cm in length!!
Wednesday, we visited the upper parts of Hyndburn to discover a sewage pollution, which was immediately rung through to the EA, and they are investigating. We then headed to the tributaries of the lower Ribble to start out Ribble surveys. At 4p.m. I met up with Mel Dyack and his trustee volunteers and we headed to stock beck and spent a couple of hours litter picking. This was great and the kids thoroughly enjoyed themselves, whilst helping to improve the environment.
The Girls with two bags of litter they pciked from Stock Beck.
Thursday we surveyed Bezza Brook from top to bottom and confirmed that our new Eel pass on the weir near the bottom of the Brook is in good working order as we found more eels, than anywhere else. Including eels that would have been elvers not 6 weeks ago. What a great results!! We also undertook a survey on Bashall Brook right at the top of the sub-catchment and got some great results, and also Pig Hill Brook – a new site where we found trout fry!
Friday we were rained off, and we had the beginnings of the flood that the system has need for a good few weeks. The Becks should now have had a good washout, and I’ll bet a fair few salmon and sea trout were caught over the weekend. I hope to see a few applications for our Catch and Release Badges. I spent a day catching up in the Office and we also had a meeting with the staff from Forest of Bowland AONB and Countryside Rangers from Lancashire County Council. This was very positive, and it looks like we can work well together to improve the aquatic environment with them.
I did not get out to fish on the weekend, and was disappointed as the RFCA Webcam showed the Ribble to be in near perfect order. I was gutted but, that’s the way it goes. Perhaps this evening…..
The first salmon fry of the year….
July 14, 2009
I was lucky last week to have been invited to fish the River Nith for two days on Thursday and Friday, so a shortened week meant I needed to try and get as many surveys in as possible on Monday to Wednesday. Monday started perfectly with 10 surveys done in one day (this is a record for us!) covering from just above Padiham weir to Sabden Brook. Many of the sites were better than expected as per usual this year, however the first site of that day due to poor netting skills – by myself – will not be able to use as “statistically viable”. It was nice to find trout in some incredibly small streams such a Simonstone and Catlow, but the treat of the day was to get into Sabden brook to find our first salmon fry of the year. We finished however on a slightly bum note, as we surveyed a beck called Sykeside (nr Altham) which we had not visited before. The water looked gin clear, which raised my suspicions immediately, as there was no Algae of vegetation in stream at all. We turned a few stones to find absolutely zip! There was no invertebrate life, and the electro fishing revealed only 1 stone loach and 5 eels. This beck is a significantly sized beck and should be perfect for salmonids, especially Salmon as it flows in below Padiham. So there is going to be more investigation by ourselves and the EA.
Tuesday was a tough day as we did a full quantitative survey on Sabden brook, which with the numbers of fish present means it takes a long time! That said there was a clear decline in the Salmon fry population from last year. With the rain in the afternoon and over night, the decision was taken to spend Wednesday in the Office catching up on correspondence and paperwork.
I was really irrate at lunch time (not just due to paperwork!) but because we had a call from a volunteer to say that the becks had changed very little over night, so we could have got out and surveyed! It is amazing what paper work there is for us though, from letters of Objection to discharge of part treated waste water (Sewage!), land drainage consents for river work projects, Invoices and reports for Fish Rescues, sending out info on the Catch and Release Badges, chasing up reported pollution incidents, and analysing volunteer kick samples!
I can never claim this job isn’t varied!!
Sun tans and thunder storms!
July 6, 2009
A very interesting and diverse week was had by the trust last week, and that doesn’t include the weather!! The Land Drainage consents finally came through to allow us to proceed with the next lot of off stream spawning channels, this meant that Stephen was flat out organising contractors and talking to land owners, for the best part of the week. I had to try and continue to take advantage of the excellent electro fishing conditions and so concentrated on trying to get some more site under my belt.
Monday was an absolute scorcher and we started on the head waters of the Brun (Calder Catchment) what a beautiful area, and seemingly stuffed full of trout! We managed 4 sites on the Brun before moving onto the Calder above Burnley. During our Brun sites we bumped into Linda the United Utilities Ranger for that area. It was nice to put a face to the name and have a good old moan about the midgies that nearly drove us from one survey site! We were also treated to a few pleasant finds on the Brun. The first was catching site of a true mayfly (Ephemera) on the wing, as I stood up to enjoy it fully, I pointed it out to Brad an before he could catch site of it a Finch came and plucked if from the air, I was both disappointed and thrilled. This was soon discussed with the Landowners wife who brought us a glass of coke with ice (many thanks!!). We also discovered at another site (location undisclosed) a colony of mussels, not the pearl kind, but another of our freshwater mussels, what was incredible was the size 114mm (or 4.5 inches!!).
On the Calder we had a site that produce more fry in 5 minutes than any quantitative site during the whole of last year, I was taken back and am a little bemused by the sudden and substantial improvement! Lower down we peered over a wall to watch a shoal of feeding trout varying from 130mm to 300mm feeding happily, and when the flash on my camera went off they didn’t bat an eye!! (pictures to be added soon).
Tuesday we had a team of us to do a quantitative site on the Brun, this site produced a trout with a missing lower jaw last year. I suspected that he wouldn’t last the winter, and much to my astonishment, not only did he survive but we caught him again!! We were also blessed by the presence of a family of dippers, with mum showing young dipper how to go about the underwater walk! What a treat. Oh a slight aside, on Tuesday night I had made my mind up that I needed a few spey casting lesson, as although I can get out a line on the single hander my spey casting left a lot to be desired. So I treated myself to a lesson with Jim Ferne. Jim was absolutely brilliant, and the lesson turned into a two hour session which had me by the end putting out a line that I felt wouldn’t embarrass any salmon! We covered 5 different casts, and Jim teaching style was brilliant and very useful even to those of a more advanced level (so one of our trustee who came along told me!). If you want a session with Jim his number is 07875174294. I am also pleased to report that Mark Rudd a Fisheries Officer for the EA, appeared half way through the lesson to check our licences! I can’t recommend him enough, if you are someone who is a complete beginner with no kit, he has everything to teach you with and will also help to recommend the right kit for the budget you have. If you are also fairly proficient and want to learn a few more casts and/or polish up your existing one, Jim can fix it (oh dear did I really make that joke?! Sorry Jim).
Wednesday I got out and electro fished until my Skin couldn’t take the sun any more, (about 15:00) at which point we headed for Sabden to check out the just finished spawning channel there. Looks great, and fingers crossed will hold some spawning fish in around 6 months!
Thursday was another important day, as we undertook another equipment check for our electro eradication of signal crayfish. For the first time the equipment held true and was still working by the end of the day. We were also able to put out a significant amount of power with what seemed to be the best results so far. Our next step is a full trial with De-watering and hand picking to determine the over all effectiveness of the method. Visually we had some great results, and seemingly an effective kill rate. What we next need to do is get a figure of effectiveness. Oh and can I say the horseflies and cleggs of the dales were… shall we say slightly less than enjoyable!
Friday we undertook a fish rescue on the Calder at Townley end for Bovis Lend Lease, who have undertaken a channel diversion to create a new entrance to a college. The new channel actually improve the aesthetics and the habitat by adding a meander to an unnaturally straight section of river. The rescue was successful, however we had a real job as near the end a torrential down pour occured and thunder and lightening were making us more than a little nervous. We did however complete the rescue before the down pour turned the river a tan/orange colour and release the fish in two location, once upstream and one down stream. Once this was done, we hung round until the dams were in place to make sure that as the old channel dried up we were on hand for any fish we may have missed. After this we headed back to the office to dry off and unload before collapsing into a chair with a hot sweet cuppa!!
I can only imagine what interesting events this week will bring!
Environment Agency news- Environment Agency moves to stop rivers running dry
- Woman rescued as car is swept away by floods
- Environment Agency tracks alien invaders
- Unwanted Christmas trees provide festive flood defences
- Queens green energy scheme nears completion
- Case for change: Drought to be commonplace by 2050s
- New taskforce will tackle illegal waste sites that blight communities
- Environment Agency moves to manage scarce water supplies across Eastern England
- Survey reveals people would save pets over gadgets in a flood
- Communities to see the future of their changing coast