End of 2009 at the Trust
December 18, 2009
Today is our last day in the office for 2 whole weeks. We have had a busy year, and it’s going to get busier next year, so a two week break is exactly what is in order. Currently sat inside with my coat on staring at the snow I hope that the weather continues like this for another month or so to give our fish and their soon to be laid eggs a chance! A little like last year basically would be brilliant. Plus a quite fancy a white xmas!
This week has flown by, with Monday being taken up by Land Drainage Consents, a consultation on Water Related Recreation strategies and looking at the new Agri-environment schemes coming out in 2010. We managed a short trip out to a nearby beck, that was very fruitful, although we saw no actual spawning on this beck we did see 4 salmon holed up in deep pool. We also found a dead hen fish, which was well eaten, and it was hard to tell if it was post or pre spawning, we hoping for the best though.
Tuesday I was out with Lancashire Fly Fishing Association up at Newton, where between 9 of us we planted, staked, and sheltered 100 English alder of 8ft in height. These have been planted along the banks of the worst section of main river on the entire catchment. We at the Trust have for years been trying to persuade the farmer to allow us to fence it off to create a habitat scheme, but he doesn’t like the idea. However Jim Dewhurst of LFFA managed to persuade him to let LFFA plant these trees. It is a starting point and hopefully it will lead to improved banks with the erosion and sediment.
Wednesday I was out with a Student who is doing their dissertation on the WFD and as a case study Grindleton Fell and it’s streams. I took him to several barriers to migration, poor habitat, good habitat, and we discussed the failures of the River Basin Management Plans. During this outing I was down on Whalley road looking at Standen Brook, which has an impassable weir under the bridge on Whalley Road. I looked around and noticed that the old mill lodge had been completely cleaned out, and the for sale sign has disappeared. So I can only assume someone has taken on the site with some development plans. Stephen and I will be quick to remind the planners that they have the power to make the developers contribute to the environment. So we would press for the removal of the weir under Whalley Rd, to allow fish passage and redistribution of substrate. Once that’s done there is just one more weir on the stream between there and Pendle Hill! In the afternoon, we worked on Project bids for, Eel beck, Hodder Flow gauging weir and Barrowford “3″ weir.
Thursday Philip came in for a meeting and progress update. Which went well, and then was the first Trust Xmas party. We had several colleagues from the EA with us and a very good time was had by all. Feeling a little delicate this morning… but Philip was surprised that we looked so pumped up and full of energy, when he dropped in unexpectedly! Well here’s to everyone, a Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year, I look forward to working with many of you in 2010
Erosion and Sediment
December 14, 2009
Dare I say it but I can feel in myself t hat the wind down to xmas has begun. Maybe it’s just me, but I am finding it hard to keep the momentum up of the last few months, or maybe it’s this cursed weather, perhaps a couple of weeks off (yes I have wrangled two weeks off!) will reinvigorate me. That said I certainly haven’t been resting on my laurels, there is so much on the to do list I am worried the weight of it will crush me, or crash my pc!
The usual Monday morning brief with Philip, it is nice when we have managed to get everything done from the week before – and then some, so that when we’re done the list hasn’t grown. That said I had to sneak off early, as Grant Talbot and myself were walking over Park Brook that morning to look at problems and potential remedies. It was very interesting, it is a strange beck that has the characteristics of a salmon stream at the bottom, a trout stream in the next section and at the top, with a very coarse fish section in the middle. That said it doesn’t have huge numbers of anything in there according to our surveys. Pollution is the number one issue, and this has been for the large part identified and the EA are on with tackling it. The second problem is sediment, the banks are eroded and the resulting sediment is being dropped in the gravels everywhere, and the water always carries enough colour that means seeing the bottom in 1 metre of water is unlikely. We identified several schemes and projects that we will start to build upon in 2010, to get underway in 2011.
Tuesday I had a meeting with an officer from the Calder pollution team from the EA, not much detail to be shared but it took the best part of the day, but was very productive. In the afternoon I had a chat to Fish legal regarding a costing they need for a court case-slightly off our patch, but it always good to work with the national organisations where we can.
Wednesday we took advantage of the good weather and headed up the upper Hodder catchment for a “look-see” and to check in with a farmer about a possible habitat scheme for next year. The visit to Langden was productive with salmon being spotted in the re-opened off stream spawning channel. This was a great result, and looking at the gravel in the channel, I have no doubt that it will be full of eggs by the end of January. The visit to the Farmer was also good, with a positive response and so we left him to go over the idea, and he asked us to check into a few aspects of our scheme and relationship to Agri-environment Schemes.
Thursday morning I was straight to Lutra house (home to our local EA teams), for a meeting with APEM, who area undertaking a survey across the UK looking at sediment and erosion, sources and solutions. We discussed technique and then resources, followed by how much of our catchment could be done. Well we did very well and have got Stock Beck, Park Brook and the River Loud into the survey. They are aiming to walk over every “blue line”, on a 1:50,000 scale map within the selected sub-catchment. These three are our worst performing, offering the best results if they can be restored. And to have the info that APEM are going to get is going to be absolutely invaluable to us.
Friday we found out some more about the Agri-environment schemes, and we were pleasantly surprised by what we found. For all the schemes, farmers have to score a minimum number of points, which is assessed and decided upon on a farm by farm basis. Once they have the points they qualify for the payments and the more points they score the better for them, because points mean prizes! In the new Upland Entry level scheme fencing of a beck scores 50 points per 100 metres and there is also a maintenance of fencing points option. For farmers in the normal ELS, there are also points for buffer strips along water courses, of various sizes and extra points where the buffer zone is to be placed on currently cultivated land. All in all there is a lot farmers can benefit from these schemes, that will benefit the water courses very significantly. The application form to get into any of these schemes is actually quite straight forward, when you first look at it, it is daunting but once you go through it, it’s not bad at all. So here’s hoping that a few more farmers are tempted by these schemes.
And for a little bit of fun, a scale taken from a salmon of 109mm in length on Stock beck, such a length normally suggests that it is a parr, i.e. 1+ winter in age. What do you think? Scale reading is often considered a bit of a black art, but those who get good at it (not me!) can disseminate quite a lot of info from a scale.
As a guide, it isn’t quite the same as counting tree rings, the rings are added continuously, but during the winter the rings will become closer together as the fishes’ growth decreases in the cold, and then they spread out during the spring summer and autumn.
Xmas is just round the corner
December 9, 2009
(Wrote this Tuesday and forgot to post it my apologies!!) With Xmas fast ajecpproaching for most it seems that things begin to wind down, I say most, not us, and certainly not my other half! We would normally have expected to see fish spawning in earnest by now, that said looking back through our diaries from last year it was the 8th of December (appropriately today) that we saw our first spawning fish on the Ribble. I apologise for the delayed blogging this week, but as soon as I got in yesterday Philip was in and then at 10:00 I went to do a walk over on Park Brook with Grant Talbot from the EA.
But back to last week first! Philip came in for the usual Monday morning session, which was quite different from the norm as both Stephen and I were on top of things so there was no big to do list coming out of the meeting, just what is sat on my desk – a rather daunting list too! Chris Heap popped into drop off some more of the Ribble Valley books by Malcolm Greenhalsh(we still have plenty available at £17.99 or £21.50 including postage). After a brew and a catch up Stephen and I were on with the usual Land drainage consent works for our fish passes next year, and grant apps. In the afternoon we headed to Eel beck on Swanside the location of one of our fish passage projects next year. The plan has changed twice for this one. An easement, then a pass, no complete removal. Removal is always the preferred option and sometimes this is forgotten. In this case we thought the land owner would want to keep the historic hydro-electric wheel. However we were wrong and getting that “lump of concrete” out of my garden was the happy result. This is a major bonus, gravel will be redistributed along the downstream channel and scouring and washout will be reduced downstream, not to mentioned the ease of movement upstream and additional habitat. This is a great sea trout/brown trout beck and will see many extra fish in the river, it should also see more eels, bullhead, and stoneloach. All of which are restoring a natural ecosystem, so the land owner could well start to see otters, king fishers and other species upstream of the weir.
Tuesday was quite productive, more work on other fish passage projects. The construction of the A59 has left three becks impassable to fish migration. The bridges (in truth they are more like culverts) are stepped wide and long, there is no depth of water so the fish can’t leap the steps. Unfortunately removing the A59 is not an option, so we are looking at installing hard would timber “weir” that are only 8-10 inches high. Carefulpositioning will mean there is depth for leaping and the fish can move upstream to spawn. Chatting to Lancashire County Council Highways, was productive and positive so we hope to be able to do this project next year. In the afternoon we were in Whalley primary school to install the latest and final Trout in the classroom tank for the year, we were almost finished when we realised we were short four pipe connectors!
Wednesday we worked on the paperwork of our projects for the most part. But the arrival of the EA’s electro fishing data from the Hodder meant I had a nice distraction as I spent some time going through the results to compare to ours and look for problems. I also spoke to Stephanie Peay about our Crayfish vs fish impact paper, and the resulting conversation has left me with something to add to the todo list!
In the evening was the RFCA meeting. This is a great forum for all angling interests from the area to come together. All though our aims and objectives are not fisheries linked, fishermen stand to benefit the most from the work of the trust. And seemingly anglers seem to be the most ready to donate time and money to looking after the environment that they (and many others!) enjoy. We were presenting a project for 2010/2011 that the RFCA kindly offered to partly support financially. Many other matters were discussed, certainly more than I put down here, but anglers in this area should be pleased that there is another organisation trying to look after their interests.
Thursday we went down to Pendle primary school in Clitheroe to check their trout in the classroom tank, to discover it wasn’t ready yet!! So another couple of hours there and we had the tank set up, running and looking fit. Bring on those trout eggs. In the afternoon I worked on “Barrowford 3″ fish pass. There are three weir in the Barrowford area, the first two we now have consent for works and will begin ASAP next year. The 3rd is a lot more involved and is the trusts biggest project to date. We are having all manner of surveys and designs done, thank fully Stephens experience in the planning consent field means he’s doing the planning permission form, which means I get the other stuff including Health and Safety.
Friday we headed back to Whalley primary school to get the tank sorted which we quickly did, and then it was back to the Office. After a busy paperwork week, I decided to do something a bit more relaxing, reading about fish! I have been asked several times about graylingand how often I come across them in my surveys. In truth not once. This worried me, and many others, as grayling numbers have been observed by some anglers on the Hodder to have dropped, although they are catching a wide variety of sizes and age classes. Last year I contacted the Grayling Societyabout the apparent lack of grayling, and was sent a very comprehensive review of Grayling ecology, status and Management practice. I thought it was about time I got my head around this fish a bit more and so I read as much as I could in the afternoon. Very interesting stuff, and the answer to my riddle was in there. Although grayling spawn in a similar way to trout and salmon, but at a different time of year, there are also a few other significant differences. They don’t dig redds for one! The eggs are laid on the surface of the substrate, although during the spawning some are inadvertently buried but only to about 5cm. Secondly where they spawn is also different from trout and salmon, preferring deeper slower moving water rather than the riffles. And finally the juveniles also prefer deeper waters, which I don’t tend to survey, as our surveys are designed to monitor trout and salmon. So I need to do some thinking as to whether I can in corporate some other survey techniques to incorporate looking for grayling. One thing I would add is that because of this, there is no official monitoring of grayling, and grayling recruitment so catch returns are essential. This info lead me back to the problems of migration for grayling, and specifically the Hodder flow gauging weir, the review on grayling ecology highlighted that they do migrate and barriers to grayling might not be barriers to trout and salmon. So I set about writing a brief for the requirement of the Hodder Flow gauging weir easement…watch this space.
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