I've told you its the GEOLOGY and FLUVIAL MORPHOLOGY (Correct terms) it runs over and though.
And the millennial deposition it has accrued and is still
accruing.
The other rivers whilst being spate rivers run though more gentle geological strata and morphology and don't have the deposition of the Ribble. That's it uniqueness Doh!
As others who actually know it well, will tell you a typical mile stretch can and does consist of riffle and pool effect (all rivers have these). The riffles being
consisting of clasts, that's pebbles to you,
form 1 mm to a meter
seve in size. Then there's the boulders, that's a rock over a metre in size. Pools consisting of Plate Bedrock with trenching gullies where the softer rock, generally sandstone, has been eroded away. These never infill with deposition for very long because they're kept clean by the floods. Doh! the floods move it!
These are unseen in most cases because of the depth of the pool, anything from 10 to 40 ft deep. The barble live in these gullies during daylight hours. So to catch them, many of the daytime anglers fish in the gullies. And one of the reasons why the tackle loss is high. Elsewhere where the riffle drops into a pool the clasts tend to be quite large, 10-20 cm, but are one of the best barbel catching areas, particularly in the summer months.
I'll leave you to workout and answer why?
In these areas you find your lead/feeder drops or gets pulled by the current between two or more of them and get snagged. Again the unwary or unknowing don't know how to deal with this type of snagging and tackle loss tends to be the result.
And as I've said the whole river is like this from source to mouth. None of the rivers you mention are like this in their whole length. Oh and unlike you I do know them very well.
That my detractor is the uniqueness of the Ribble. But of course you'll tell me that's waffle Yeh right, coming from a man who lives in the south, has never fished it, hasn't denied he's only ever seen it for 10 second as he whizzes past at 70+ mph on the M6. As to point scoring, kettle, pot black comes to mind!
Sam I suggest you do a bit more reading about the Lead Mine you quoted.
As to made up figures, pray tell me how they are made up? They are a realistic estimate based on experience of talking to many members over the last 25+ years of fishing and bailiffing the river. Tigger has suggested the figure is an underestimate and that may well be correct, as I acknowledge earlier.
Got say I'm staggered that you think it's of very little impact.
Sometimes anglers can be their own worse enemies
mg:
What I will say is that Jim Hinchley who did post a lot on this site some years ago, did state on here, he dived regularly on a stretch during the close season, where I last saw Tiggar fishing, and would collect all the leads/feeders in the gully most cast into, getting up to a 100 at a time.
