Hedgehog rescue

Nether Wallop Mill, Hampshire England

The headlines in the past few days for hedgehogs have been pretty stark - their numbers have apparently halved in the past 15 years. As is often the case the facts behind these sorts of headlines, generated by a pressure group, aren't always as rigorous as maybe they should be. You will find the press coverage caveated by plenty of phrases along the lines of 'reliable estimates of hedgehog numbers are hard to come by ...... '.

 

All that said from my various perambulations around the rivers I'd say I don't see as many Erinaceus europaeus as I did. Believe it or not, despite appearances, hedgehogs are really quite good swimmers. Living beside rivers is a favoured haunt with worms and insects aplenty plus, naturally enough, fresh water. They don't seem to relish swimming as a pastime but they will happily cross a fairly sizeable stream when need be.

I will also promise you for such a tiny creature a baby hedgehog, combined with a panic stricken mother, is capable of creating a considerable racket. Two winters ago I was at home beside the fire late one night when I heard this piercing wail outside; at first I assumed it was the cat or a stoat doing to death some rabbit or other but the wailing kept on and on. Eventually I had to investigate. There trapped between the slats of a bridge over the stream was a baby hedgehog, its mother at its side trying to haul it out.  But somehow however much the infant scrabbled and however much the mother screamed (I assume it was encouragement but it was hard to tell), the situation was not getting any better.

I headed back indoors, grabbed a tea towel and whilst the mother eyed me from a distance I managed to safely extricate the baby from the slats. The poor thing was completely exhausted so I left him (or it could have been a her) for while until the mother returned to investigate and then the two toddled off together.

When is a restoration not a restoration?

You will read a great deal about river 'restorations'; in plenty of cases it is nothing of the sort. Chalkstreams in particular are very much the creation of man and the rivers have been adapted over millennia for all sorts of purposes such as agriculture, navigation, milling and so on - today we want something different from our rivers and so what we are really creating is something new that chimes with our current desires. I am not exactly sure under which heading the recent work on the famous Oakley beat at Mottisfont Abbey on the River Test would fall but I am certain that as the home of dry fly fishing under Frederick Halford he would have approved.

If you've ever fished the Oakley Stream you will know that the character of the beat very much divides into two sections; the first half is relatively shallow, with a fast flow over gravel and the river is very much part of the landscape. The top half is different in two ways; firstly the river almost seems 'above' the surrounding meadows the banks built up like small dykes and the river itself is deeper, without the gravel bed. This is probably not accidental.

In all likelihood in the dim, distant past the gravel river bed was dredged out, the spoil used to build up the banks to their current height. I can't be exactly sure why this was but my guess is that the deepened main river was used as a reservoir to feed a now defunct side stream that branches off the Oakley Stream. What that side stream fed again I'm not sure but it could have been for water meadow flooding, fish rearing or powering a mill. These were fairly typical uses for a river in times when neither ecology nor fishing featured much in the calculation of many.

Today of course we feel differently; rivers are being changed to create a diverse habitat both in and along the river, with great emphasis on work that encourages a self-sustaining wild trout population plus spawning areas for salmon. 

With all that in mind a jointly funded project between the owners of Mottisfont Abbey (The National Trust) and the Environment Agency, using the brains in the hydrology department of Southampton University, has seen 1,600 tonnes of gravel put into the upper section of the Oakley Stream. It has all been part of a scheme under the guidance of Heb Leman, the man who runs the Test & Itchen Rivers Restoration Scheme and really we have him to thank.

Yes, you have probably guessed that what Heb and the team are essentially doing is putting back what was dredged out all those years ago. It is a fairly common sight along the chalkstreams these days. ARK (Action for the River Kennet) recently completed a similar project in Berkshire with almost twice that amount of gravel, though shockingly they were making good dredging done as recently as the 1970's. 

The work itself is quick and straightforward. Bring in the gravel; large stones for the base and smaller stuff for the topping. Scoop it into the river with a big machine and then use a smaller one in the river itself to profile the gravel. Job done. Sometimes the banks are graded down to create a gradual slope but this wasn't required at Mottisfont.

The before and after photos  give you some idea of what is trying to be achieved. The after is a short section that was done on the Oakley ten years ago. In fact it is a little on the shallow side so some of the gravel will be scraped off as part of this work.  

The effect on the river is almost immediate; the heavy winter floods will re-profile the gravel yet again but in the exact way nature likes it. But even before then the new gravel will show those tell-tale pock marks as both the trout and salmon get busy spawning. Some judicious planting of ranunculus will kick start the weed growth and I suspect in less than a year it will all look totally natural, which is exactly how it should be.

 

Jon Hall's pike secret is a comb

Really no excuse is required to show this great photo of Jon Hall with the monster pike he caught back in February.

However if you want to read more about Jon's deadly weapon (a comb) and how he finds these huge female fish catch my interview with Jon in the December edition of The Field magazine. 

Quiz

The usual random selection of questions to confound and amaze. Answers at the bottom of the Newsletter. It is just for fun!

 

 

1)   What speed does Usian Bolt reach during a 100m race?

2)   What do you call a baby beaver?

3)   What is a petroglyph?

Tattoo artist turns fly tyer

I have watched a great many fly tying films in my time and frankly they are generally on the boring side of interesting. This one however, about tattoo artist turned fly tyer Pat Cohen, is different. Get a cup of coffee, set aside 10 minutes of your day. It will be worth it.

Here is the link that will take you to the Bloomberg page. As the screen will say click to watch or scroll down to read the article. 

Enjoy the rest of the week.

 

 

Best wishes,

    

Simon Cooper simon@fishingbreaks.co.uk

Founder & Managing Director  

1)  28 mph 2) A kit 3) An image carved into rock.

The course of true love

The course of true love

  

I have a pet swan; his name is Arthur the Arthritic on account of a gammy leg. He is of indeterminate age, though clearly getting on a bit and lives on the lake here at Nether Wallop Mill. I must admit I never set out to have a swan for a pet - they are not the friendliest of creatures and are, in truth, a bit messy. That said we have reached a sort of amiable compromise over the past four or five years.

Happier times?

His daily routine mainly involves paddling around the lake, rear end in the air and head underwater whilst he eats away at the pond weed. For this he has my eternal thanks; he is my 24 hour a day feathered river keeper who requires no more payment than a chance to gobble his share of the fish pellets. You might wonder if he is a nuisance to the fishing. Well, not really. Our accommodation is so complete that at the sight of fishermen he hauls himself from the lake to spend the day in the mill pond, returning again when all is quiet.

For years he has been a confirmed bachelor, the sole guardian of the lake since his mate died some while ago. In the intervening time other pairs have dropped in from the sky, but after a fierce turf war left Arthur all to his lonesome. That is until last Saturday when I woke to the unmistakable sound of swans in flight, the whooping wings alerting Arthur to inbound strangers. As is his wont he positioned himself in the middle of the lake, arching his body skyward, aggressively flapping his wings as the pair circled ever lower.

Now swans in a straight line, high in the skies are graceful birds but a low speed, with sharp turns to make they are anything but and as one of the pair took aim for landing she entirely misjudged the landscape hitting the chimney of the fishing cabin, tumbling down the roof into the trees behind. For the other swan clearly out of sight was out of mind so after a few desultory minutes circling the lake he disappeared into the distance.

I was firmly convinced, such was the thump, that the swan had died on impact but a little while later this slightly dazed and wobbly bird came out from behind the cabin slipping gently onto the lake to join Arthur. His joy was unconfined. He preened and pivoted as the two became a pair within minutes. By the afternoon they were together on the bank, tearing rough grass from the fringe, a sort of nesting thing swans do. By dusk they had settled down to roost together for the night. I could hear the distant pitter patter of little cygnet feet.

But by morning it had all gone woefully wrong. Whilst Arthur, clearly agitated, pushed himself around the lake, the female stood on the bank, twitching her head this way and that. Occasionally he'd make a pass to bring himself as close to her as he could without leaving the water, but she'd edge ever further away until her mind made up, she ran at the lake flapping her wings and paddling her feet on the water until she took flight to never be seen again.

Since then I haven't seen much of Arthur as he's forsaken the lake to sulk on the mill pond, even forgoing his daily pellet ration. It is hard to work out what could have gone wrong in those few hours of darkness. In the bird kingdom what on earth is the ultimate dating crime? Was he too old? Or maybe swans truly do mate for life and she felt impelled to find her erstwhile mate. Frankly if I was her I wouldn't have bothered; he was quick enough to say adieu when she thumped the chimney but then again even in the animal kingdom it is doubtful that the course of true love ever ran smooth.

Ban on sea bass fly fishing 

Unless my memory serves me wrong I am pretty certain that two decades ago sea bass on a menu would have been a rarity. Maybe it was common enough in top end sea food restaurants, but on a pub menu, well hardly ever. Today it is very different and sea bass are paying a price for their popularity; the breeding population around our coast has dropped from 16,000 tonnes in 2010 to 7,000 today. 

This has not gone unnoticed. ICES, the International Council for the Exploration of the Seas, flagged this up during the summer and the EU acted yesterday with a complete ban on all sea bass fishing January to June, with severe restrictions for the remainder of the year. 

For the day trawler fleet, that is boats under 10m, this is a body blow. Behind sole, sea bass is the most valuable catch. For the line fishermen who specialise in sea bass out of ports like Weymouth, it is crippling.

But this is not just a commercial decision; we 300,000 recreational anglers are included with a complete ban for the first six months of the year and a limit of one fish a day for the remainder of the year. Quite how it is going to affect the saltwater fly fishing guides I do not know. Will we be able to catch and release, or will even the intention to fish for bass be illegal? In truth it is going to be impossible to police but nobody wants to wilfully break the law with a livelihood at stake.

In part I can understand bureaucratic even-handedness when it comes to applying a ban equally to both commercial and recreational anglers but is it really necessary? I suspect fly fishermen and beach casters are a pinprick on the sea bass population. It is time for a rapid rethink from Brussels. 

Quiz

The usual random selection of questions to confound and amaze. Answers at the bottom of the Newsletter. It is just for fun!

 

 

1)   Other than Great Britain itself which is the largest island in the UK?

2)   It is Prince Charles' birthday this week. How old will he be?

3)   What is a dynast?

Review of the season & feedback winners

Two winners this month as we wrap up another trout season; thank you to you all who contributed replies, which are an invaluable insight to every day on the river.

2015 will be the year the dog didn't bark in that we almost had a drought but nobody talked about it. Certainly the water companies, scared of egg on their faces so soon after the floods, didn't say a word but the winter, spring and autumn have been exceptionally dry, especially the last two months with rainfall only half the normal average. I guess our memories are coloured by a very wet May (157% average rainfall) and August which was the wettest on record. If you want to check out the full statistics for southern England follow this link to the Met Office web site.

All that said the chalkstreams held up well, though they were certainly starting to look thin as the season drew to an end. Generally I thought hatches were good in every month.  The Grannom has made a comeback as the April fly of choice, the Mayfly was a good as any year though the wetness of May itself seemed to stop and start the hatch from day to day. Sedges continue to be prolific and the back end has seen huge clouds of tiny olives daily.

The feedback showed remarkably consistent fishing across the season; no sudden decline after the Mayfly and only a few dog days in high summer. If I had to pick out one theme it was the lack of consistently rising fish. I think as Guides it is fair to say we read the water more, pick the best seasonal fly and encourage more speculative casting. Poor old Mr. Halford, who thought such a tactic was a crime, must be spinning in his grave.

Anyway enough of the past: well done to Graham Dunn who picks up the October draw prize of a signed copy ofLife of a Chalkstream having fished at Avon Springs. Philip Watkins, who took his children on Fish Camp to the River Dun in July, collects the Hardy Cascapedia reel in the annual draw.

Have a good weekend; I certainly will if Storm Abigail brings a dump of rain.

 

 

Best wishes,

    

Simon Cooper simon@fishingbreaks.co.uk

Founder & Managing Director  

1)   Lewis and Harris, Outer Hebrides 2) 67 on November 14th 3) A member of a powerful family, especially a hereditary ruler.

How genius endures

Greetings!    This month Orvis celebrates 30 years on the English high street and it is an odd thought but I write this from the very same room from which the Orvis operation was run in 1985, the American firm having acquired Nether Wallop Mill and Dermot Wilson's famous mail order company four years earlier. For nearly two decades the Orvis HQ remained at The Mill, the Stockbridge shop the first of a chain that now numbers close to 20 nationwide. The mail order operation and the logistics for the shops were all run out of here and as the firm expanded it truly became a hub of activity. First one of the Perkins, the family that still owns Orvis, came over to oversee the new venture and lived in the Mill Cottage to be succeeded by a UK managing director John Russell who raised his family here. I don't think anyone would disagree but the foundation of the Orvis enterprise was the genius of Dermot Wilson. I never met Dermot, but I suspect he was restless soul. He came to fly fishing by way of Winchester College where the Itchen runs beside the sport fields and a distinguished service in WW2 where he was awarded the Military Cross. He dallied with the Foreign Office (he was fluent in Mandarin Chinese) before joining the advertising colossus J. Walter Thompson to become its youngest ever director. But selling cornflakes was clearly not his thing. As his wife Renee told me he arrived home one day in 1968 announcing that he had found the most wonderful mill in Hampshire and that he intended to resign his job to start a mail order fly fishing business. I am not sure if Dermot was entirely truthful with Renee about the condition of Nether Wallop Mill. It was in a truly dreadful state so they set about restoring it, living in the cottage and making offices of the mill building. To boot Dermot dug the trout lake which within three years produced the British rainbow trout record (9lb 12 ½ oz in case you ask) which to this day remains the spot where countless fly fishing lives have begun. Not much changed today ..... There were two secrets to Dermot's early success: the first and most obvious was that he was the first to offer a full service mail order company which combined with his marketing genius and considerable expertise, to make his catalogues annual bibles to the temple of fly fishing. But I think more than that he realised the British fly fishing industry had fallen woefully far behind its American counterparts. In the post-war years all the innovations were coming from the US so he set out to find the best tackle and sold it to an eager market that was exploding as the craze for stillwater fishing took off. The Mill became something of a Mecca for all the greats of the 60's and 70's: Frank Sawyer, the man behind the lake construction, and Ollie Kite lived just up the road. Charles Ritz, Lee Wulff, Ernest Schwiebert, Bernard Venables .... well the list goes on. Even our very own Charles Jardine lived here for two years as 'the apprentice' when he was fresh out of art college. Dermot was always a marketing man to his core; he understood that the fishermen he sold kit to would appreciate somewhere to fish so he bought what are still the two Orvis beats at Kings Worthy on the Itchen and the Ginger Beer beat at Kimbridge on the Test. Here at The Mill his tuition, largely done by Jim Hadrell and Charles Jardine, was the pipeline for a new generation. At the height he had fourteen people working here. If that seems a lot (if you have ever visited The Mill you will agree it is) Orvis took it to a new level; I think I am right in saying that by the time Orvis were ready to leave in 1998 to a less lovely but more suitable warehouse in Andover there were close to forty full and part time employees. The phrase quart and pint pot comes easily to mind. To this day we still get the odd rod delivered for repair and there are plenty of Orvis employees who tell me wistfully where they had their desk or office. I have to tell you they made a clean job of clearing the place out; I never found a cache of Battenkill reels. In fact all I ever found were two empty rod bags. Anyway congratulations to Orvis; 30 years is a mighty achievement for a specialty retailer on the brutal battlefield of the English high street but maybe a quick glance to the heavens in appreciation of Dermot Wilson might not go amiss. Sawyer's Lake In dangerous company ...... Somehow I've been invited to talk at the Petworth Festival, that includes best selling authors such as Andy McNab (hope I don't say anything to offend him...) and David Starkey. I'm up at noon on Thursday November 5th so if you live locally do come along to hear my 'Life of a Chalkstream' show. Tickets from the on-line or from the festival box office 01798 343055. Quiz The usual random selection of questions to confound and amaze. Answers at the bottom of the Newsletter. It is just for fun! 1)   Who won the 2015 World Carp Fishing Championships? 2)   How often does an otter have a litter of cubs? 3)   What is gault? Sporting hospitality Congratulations to The Greyhound in Stockbridge who have just picked up an award for Britain's Best Sporting Pub 2015, organised by Country Life and the Countryside Alliance. It is a great accolade for Lucy and the team (you may remember her from her days at The Peat Spade) that is fully deserved and we wouldn't expect anything less of the inn that very kindly hosts the River Test One Fly. There's Lucy .... On that thought entries for the 2016 contest that takes place on Friday April 22nd are now open. The Iron Man Fly Tying Challenge and the Fly Fishing Film Tour will be in Stockbridge the previous evening. Get those rooms booked! More details .......    Have a good weekend. Best wishes,   Simon Cooper simon@fishingbreaks.co.uk Founder & Managing Director   1)   England. River Ebro, Spain October 7-10th. 2) Once every two years. 3) A thick, heavy clay found under southern England.

Cut off in it's prime?

Nether Wallop Mill, Stockbridge, Hampshire, UK - Tuesday October 13th 2015

Greetings!

The death was swift. A brief press release from the offices of the CLA (Countryside Landowners Association) consigned the annual Game Fair to history. The biggest event in the rural calendar, at least measured by the number of people that attended, was to be cancelled. No reprieve was offered. Even though dates for the 2016 event at Ragley Hall had been in the diary for two years, it was all over forever. The show, despite being visited by around a 150,000 people, was a loss maker for the CLA and the membership could no longer support the losses.

Heady days. Kate Middleton at the 2004 Game Fair.

There will be many of you out there who will never have visited the Game Fair and plenty more abroad who are not familiar with the concept. In a nutshell take three glorious English summer days at the end of each July. Against the backdrop of a magnificent stately home erect a show ground amidst the oak parkland and alongside the Capability Brown lake. Invite the best of British rural sports, trades and craftsmen to showcase their wares. Throw open the gates to make this a celebration of all things great about the countryside. A place where old friends reconnect and new eyes are opened. What could go wrong? Well, apparently quite a lot. 

I must admit I always thought the Game Fair and the CLA odd bedfellows. The latter, as the name suggests, is an upmarket association. I always rather enjoy its glossy, quarterly magazine but the contents are more suited to Downton Abbey that your local dentist surgery. If it had a problems page (maybe it should ....) the letters would read: "Dear Edgar, My gardener has announced his intention to take his annual two weeks vacation in July. Does he not realise this is grass growing season?" I am probably being a little cruel but you get the general idea.

I don't want to describe the Game Fair of its last few years as downmarket but, in what was clearly an effort for survival, it was chasing an audience that was a very long way from both the magazine and my Utopian vision of what it might be. As an exhibitor and visitor I have been unfulfilled. Certainly financially. As an exhibitor it was a black hole. As a visitor the £35 entrance fee in 2015 was eye-watering. The first ever Game Fair in 1959 was 13p; that is Weimar Republic scale inflation. But setting the money issues aside the show had lost its way. It's USP, unique selling point, that opportunity to offer a glimpse of the magic of country sports, was lost in the melee stands more suited to an urban weekend market. 

Has the Game Fair died in it's prime? Well, probably not. At 56 it was showing its age in a world that has moved on, where I doubt even the term "Game Fair" in itself means anything. It will leave a hole in the summer calendar and plenty will mourn its passing, but maybe in its place will rise something that will inspire future generations as the shows of the 1970's did for me.

Knotweed and other menaces

Ever wondered why the 2012 London Olympics cost us taxpayers so much? Well, I don't exactly know but I bet nobody surveying the Hackey site prior to construction gave the Japanese Knotweed a second glance. They should have done. It took £70m to eradicate before the first concrete slab was poured.

Japanese Knotweed

This I know because I have been re-reading Balsam Bashing and How to tackle other invasive non-native species by Theo Pike who I bumped into at the Wild Trout Awards last week. Though he likes to deflect, Theo is the undoubted authority on all things invasive.  

I know the title of the book is a bit prescriptive but it truly is a good read. I never knew that the Freshwater Shrimp Gammarus pulex, a staple diet of chalkstream trout, was entirely absent from Ireland until misguidedly introduced in the 1950's to Northern Ireland. Now spreading south it is devastating the native population. Our good friend Himalayan Balsam (Britain's tallest annual plant) gets a mention as do rabbits that took me up short. My daughter, a keen spotter of crayfish, was horrified to read Theo's advice "It is illegal to release or allow to escape non-native crayfish ..... crush underfoot."

Anyway it is very good bible to the law of unintended consequences; it should be mandatory reading for anyone keen on introducing beavers, wolves and their like.

Which all leads me in a very roundabout way to congratulate John Wyett who wins the September Feedback Draw winner with a signed copy of Theo's book on its way to you. 

John you, like everyone who has sent in a form this season, goes back in the draw for the fine Hardy Cascapedia reel to be drawn on 31st October. 

Hardy Cascapdedia reel

Jonny's trout

If you ever wondered what a river keeper does at lunchtime, well wonder no more. Jonny Walker, with a deftly placed Daddy Long Legs, plucked this monster trout out of Wallop Brook here at Nether Wallop Mill. Got to be six pounds or more ......

It actually caused a little bit of debate when I posted it on Facebook. Nice stockie said some. Others were not so sure. The truth is Edward leads something of a gilded life in the mill pool. Life is easy. The water is slack and the food plentiful from the bread he steals from the ducks to a multiplicity of small fish that he snacks on for a pastime.

Is he a stockie? Well, he may of been a very, very long time ago but no more than half a pound in weight way back then. Anyway he is back in the river, hopefully relishing his momentary fame.

Mystery fish

We had our end-of-season Guides party last week (yes, we went fishing .....) and Bob Preston bought along a photo of this fish he recently caught. Could we guess what this salmonid was? You can just see the adipose fin, so it is no coarse fish or sea fish but even with that clue we were all bamboozled. 

It was caught on a fly, but not in any traditional method. As Bob describes: "About 15 years ago I finally found out the method that the locals use which is a team of about 6 tiny buzzers with a decent sized lead underneath to get the flies down the 20 metres or so where the fish seem to spend most of their time feeding on plankton."

Maybe you know? Answer at the bottom of the page.

The Invisible World - award winning film

Great work takes dedication; this film is that. The director and film maker Andrew O'Donnell arrived at my home at 9am in July to film

the chalkstreams. 'Come far?' I asked, 'Glasgow' he replied. Yes, they drove down and up in a single day to shoot a few hours of footage. 

Andrew's short film The Invisible World has just won the Salmon & Trout Conservation UK video competition which in the words of the organisers seeks to 'to explore the beauties as well as the threats that face our underwater environment - the invisible world that no-one sees, but which surrounds us all and is so vital to our well-being.' 

Well done Andrew. The £2,000 prize will go some way to paying for the petrol!

View the film on You Tube click on the image or here.

Have a good week.

Best wishes,

 

Simon Cooper simon@fishingbreaks.co.uk

Founder & Managing Director  

Mystery fish: It is a European whitefish Coregonus lavaretus. We did briefly think it might be a Houting, a fish that is technically extinct, but still caught from time to time in Norway. That said this particular whitefish, caught by Bob in Austria, is pretty rare in itself listed in the vulnerable species category. More about it on Wikipedia.

Think like an eel

Think like an eel

Here's a problem to solve: up and down the rivers of Britain, and indeed across Europe, thousands of turbines are being installed to generate electricity. In our drive for 'green' energy they seem the ideal solution but aside from the large, big money projects a vast majority are small scale, bringing to life water mills that have lain idle for a century or more. So far, so good. But here's the issue. Turbines are not benign. Those blades rotate at a terrific speed, shredding in the blink of an eye, any living creature unfortunate enough to get sucked in. And sadly that is often eels and eels are one of the great ecological disaster stories of recent years. A population that used to sustain a whole industry on the chalkstreams is in headlong decline, by some estimates collapsing by as much as 90%.

Much is still unknown about the life of an eel, but in a nutshell the eel starts its life as an egg attached to the sargassum weed of the Sargasso Sea which lies off the east coast of Florida in the Atlantic.  Once hatched the tiny elver hitches a ride on the Gulf Stream that carries it across the ocean for 3.500 miles to the shores of Europe. Seeking out freshwater by smell our international traveller is now 3-4 inches long, heading up a river system in search of a new home. Guided by who knows what the eel hauls himself from the water to find a damp ditch or pond where he will live out the next 10-20 years growing at no more than an inch a year.

Mature and ready to procreate he will use the same sense of smell to find his way back to the river, slivering through the meadow grass in the damp dew of morning. That was the easy bit. Once in the river it is back to the ocean and the return trip to the Sargasso Sea by catching a southern current, but this time the return trip that takes as much as a year. However, this is a one way ticket for the eel for once he re-enters saltwater he stops feeding and will gradually absorb his innards for nourishment, dying once spawning is completed back in the very place of his birth.

During the past decade the number of eels making this amazing round trip has declined dramatically. I've noticed it. Once I would have barely given an eel a second glance, today my sightings are fewer. You don't hear them sucking insects off the reeds at dusk and fish guts that were previously snatched away into the deep by the unseen jaws of ravenous eels now drift downstream unmolested. It is generally thought the collapse in stocks is due to a virus the European eel has caught from the Japanese eel out in the mid- Atlantic. The one or two commercial eel catchers that are left live off slender pickings.

Eel traps: redundant for ever?

So back to that problem - how do you prevent eels entering the turbines? A grille would seem the obvious solution but eels are so slender and lithe that the mesh would have to be so fine as to render the turbine inoperable. With up to third of every eel run being sliced up the scientists at Southampton University, England turned their minds to the problem but cunningly looked for a behavioural solution. The Irish Examiner takes up the story:

"The Southampton scientists wanted to find a way to warn eels of the danger. They began by studying the behaviour of the fish as they travelled down river. A hydro-electric station on the River Stour was taken out of service in the 1970s. It has derelict turbine bays where the team could adjust the flow and velocity of the water passing through them and simulate various conditions eels might encounter approaching a power-station. Forty migrating eels were captured and fitted with acoustic transponders. Eight hydrophones, fitted around the study site, enabled the locations and behaviour of the eels to be monitored. The eels were released upstream of the turbine, five at a time.

Three of the 40 swam upstream and did not enter the study bay. Most of the remaining 37 moved downstream "approaching the intake semi-passively". They followed the main flow but, on encountering a structure ahead of them, made multiple exploratory approaches before passing it. When the rate of water flow increased gradually, the eels continued to move with it, drifting into the turbine shaft. If the water flow began to increase suddenly, however, they avoided the turbine; sudden acceleration warns eels of impending danger.

If engineers can come up with devices to constrict the flow of water and increase it rapidly ahead of a turbine intake, it will be good news for eels. The sudden change in the speed of the water will alert eels to the impending danger. Engineering a slow steady flow towards a fish-pass, on the other hand, should persuade the frightened eels to use that route instead. This won't solve all of the eels' many problems but every little helps."

It is an amazing thought that a solution so simple might work.

.

  

Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust fisheries report

It is not all light reading but if you get a chance the latest Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust (GWCT) fisheries report is worth delving into.

There is some good stuff on the Frome salmon work, more on hydropower schemes in relation to salmon smolts, sea trout research, the beaver issue and an update on the long-term grayling study. The report is littered with nuggets of information. For instance I've long known that grayling are an indicator species, perishing or leaving water at the first sign of pollution but I never knew why. Apparently they have a small liver in proportion to their body as compared to trout and salmon so are more sensitive to environmental change.

If you'd like to read the GWCT 2014 report click on this link.

Angling Trust Paul Whitehouse video

In the August Newsletter I posed the question Can you trust the Angling Trust? which sparked some email correspondence with the Trusts' CEO Mark Lloyd.

As ever Mark was congenial and constructive, but he rightly pointed out that the Paul Whitehouse go fishing video is embedded on Matt Hayes' Facebook page where it has been viewed at staggering 185,000 times. If you are a fan of Facebook Matt's is one of the best and most regularly updated of all the fishing sites. 

His photo today of a baby Blue Marlin is typical of the cool stuff he posts. View it here .....

Quiz

 

The usual random selection of questions to confound and amaze. Answers at the bottom of the Newsletter. It is just for fun!

1) What would you make with Arundinaria amabilis?

2) When did Ernest Hemingway, author of Old Man of the Sea, die?

3) What is limnology?

  

Have a good weekend.

Best wishes,

 

Simon Cooper simon@fishingbreaks.co.uk

Founder & Managing Director  

Quiz answers: 1) A split cane rod 2) 1961  3)  The study of inland waters.