Weirs and Trout stream restoration
March 29, 2010
Well the title should give you a good idea of what I was up to last week! Monday I was out and about with Kyle Young (EA fisheries Technical Specialist) and we had some students and staff from Hull university looking at potential hydro schemes and existing hydro scheme.
It managed to rain on us pretty much non stop, but they didn’t detract from the day. It was very interesting to discuss some of the potential impacts. Some of which are easier/harder to understand than others. One thing that was of particular interest was a tour of Settle Hydro scheme, during which we were able to watch the machine switch on and the impact on water over the weir and down the fish pass.
Tuesday Kyle and I shared lifts and headed up to Appleby to the Trout Stream project workshop. It was a brilliant 2 day workshop with much networking and discussion going on. The recently published paper on crayfish in which we were involved was actually discussed during one of the talks (a nice little ego boost for me!), and to list all the other topics of talks would take several pages. One thing that was really good fun and interesting was an evening session entitled “how good was your river?” this was where the Eden rivers trust engaged many of the local anglers and clubs to get more information about historic catches and problems.
Thursday I met Phill Harries an Arboriculturist on site at Barrowford 3 to discuss the Tree protection plan required for the Planning permission application. Once this was sorted it was back to the office for a Padiham weir update meeting with the EA. This was good and progress to date was excellent, but we need little rain and only at the weekends – the cost of the river being in spate and keeping them from working in river is colossal so anyone caught doing rain dances will not be popular!
Friday the river was in spate and so some planned invert sampling was cancelled and we switched to checking on old schemes. And visiting more weir and barrier sites. Unfortunately I had to add another two to the list. We also measured up flow rates on Swanside in preparation for adjustments to the fish easement there. Volunteers take note I will be roping you in for this one soon!
I’m looking forward to a short week this week as last week seemed to take forever, plus a disasterous days fishing yesterday has left me with a touch of the man flu!
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