Dorset Stour on the road to recovery

[Berty]

Not my river, but fascinating reading..........the only thing i can comment on is that i would without any hesitancy trust Mark and Neils comments about Salmon above any EA spin!!!!!..........it is also wonderful to see the BS, as anglers contributing in such a way.

 

[Fred Bonney]

I fear what we may have left is the odd 'flyer' and not a lot in between. Whether the BS's efforts to restock barbel will succeed I don't know; I think there are a few small barbel in a quiet gulley near where I live but other than that not aware of continued sightings. In the Avon things may be brighter?

The EA surveys were mentioned; I have those from the 90s but after 2000 these became impossible to obtain despite my best efforts.

Another from our website from Pete Reading in a pre season wander

20th April 2011

Walking the rivers in the Close Season is always a refreshing and interesting exercise and a good source of much needed exercise anyway. The Dorset Stour is very low and not very clear, due to low rainfall, high temperatures and an early spring algal bloom, but I checked out some of the stretches we have stocked with barbel recently to see if I could spot any of the fish that were introduced by the Barbel Society and EA in the last three years. No signs of any barbel, but a lot to expect really. 9000 barbel can be easily lost in a few miles of river, and a few years are needed before the survivors reach maturity and show themselves. The stone croys the EA put in are maturing nicely, and the fry bays were swarming with millions of tiny fish, hopefully giving them shelter and a helping hand to survive in a river still repairing itself after the horrendous dredgings of thirty years ago. Last year I saw barbel of three to four pounds that could well have been from the first stocking, but hard to tell for sure.

 

[alan whittington]

Fred,last year i caught a barbel of no more than 12ozs,plus a couple of others 1.5lb-2lbs,this year i had two about 2lbs and another two over the 4lb mark,i would imagine these were stockies.

 

[Fred Bonney]

You have a PM Alan.

Just for information our next Research & Conservation auction will start on the 17th November. Last year there were in excess of 50 lots.
I'll seek permission from the FM man in charge to put full details, or a link on here soon.
If you are keen to put something into anglers own funding of conservation/river improvement work, and it's not just barbel that benefit, you will be able to bid for all sorts of angling related lots.
For instance, the day on the Thames recently with David Seaman,was kindly donated by FM and arranged by Jeff Woodhouse.

We will be asking as many of the angling world we can reach to donate, but if you have something you can donate to the list of lots, it would be much appreciated, and will get full acknowledgement in the angling "press".

Please PM me

 

[murraybank]

Just to follow on from some peoples comments that the Dorset Stour is dead.

I fished a part of the river on Saturday and bagged up on some absolutely stunning good Roach.

Average size was between 8oz and 1lb but had 10 fish all very close to the wonderful 2lb mark..

Must of had well over 30lb of fish..

The river was very weedy and not much flow but me and a friend found a couple of glides to work are floats thorough and the fishing was brillant..

 

[Fred Bonney]

Good to hear Chris the prophets of doom don't know it all,do they!

 

[cg74]

Good to hear Chris the prophets of doom don't know it all,do they!

Fred, it is indeed good to hear, but things need to be balanced, one reasonable catch return does not make a river a good fishery.

 

[Fred Bonney]

Quite right, but with barbel & roach caught, one would assume from different locations, it's far from dead I would suggest!

 

[cg74]

"it's far from dead I would suggest!"

I agree, but it is certainly a shadow of its former self and I reckon it's still deteriorating at a alarming rate, yes there are inroads being made but regards the roach, the populations are becoming so fragmented and apart from Cormorant predation, I've yet to hear of a fact based plausible explanation and one thing I am totally opposed to is the stocking of fish into an environment that they can't thrive in.

Regards the barbel and roach strongholds being different locations, yes and no. I've caught most roach from around Wimborne (low barbel numbers present) but I've also seen and caught plenty (in years gone by) at Longham, Muscliffe and Throop beat 1, all held reasonable barbel numbers. Throop beat 2 was always a bit hit and miss for roach and definitely offered some of the more prolific barbel sport.

This though goes back to my point alluded to earlier in this post; if barbel numbers are falling on say Throop beat 2 and it's a busy area, so keeping cormorants at bay, why are roach not filling that biomass void and at best, the chub are only just sustaining their numbers (certainly not increasing them).

 

[Fred Bonney]

It may well be a shadow of it's former self Colin, but a few bad reproduction years in the river may be the reason.
Like other rivers, no doubt it'll come back when things are right.

I would rather hear that fish are being caught, than the river is dead.

In the last few years or so people have been saying there were no roach in the Trent,when there patently were!

So I accept the positives, and merely note the negatives and do nothing about it cries.

 

[MarkTheSpark]

I cut my angling teeth on the Stour in the early '70s and remember the beginning of the WA's appalling 'improvements' when they destroyed the stretch on the upper river at Hammoon by straightening it.

The Stour needed to have the flood meadows and winter floods to keep flowing in summer; it's the water being held up by the bends and shallows that feeds the aquifer, to be fed back in summer.

Abstraction is a major issue here, and elsewhere; and cormorants may have had some influence, particularly on stocks already under severe pressure.

But the root-and-branch changes needed to save our rivers - all of the them - need to come from government. We need to find some subsidy for farmers maintaining flood meadows in the traditional way, reinstate flood plains so they actually flood and manage the winter flow better.

Rainwater harvesting should be compulsory on all new build homes and businesses, and subsidised for retrofit to existing buildings; it's such simple technology to re-pipe a building so the loos and washing machines use rainwater.

But I'm with Paul Boote completely; it's lack of breeding success that has caused the paucity of fish we have and, while that is partly addressed by the above measures, ultimately we need to think through some mitigating strategies that will cost money. And money's what we haven't got.