It's grim t'up north!

Oy you lot stop cleaning your cars

North-west England 'could reach drought status in weeks' | Environment | The Guardian

I see the Lee/Lea gets a slated which is strange that its 42 miles long and 39 miles of it is superb

My car did get a wash this morning - it rained. The only thing I have dirtier than my car is my girlfriend. People avoid crashes with me just because they don't want to get their's mucky.
Unfortunately, if I look at the driveways around me, there are Mercs each side, and across is a Merc, then a Cayenne, a 911 and some idiotic big red thing, all of which cause the road to be awash with soapy water every time the sun comes out, straight down the surface drains and into my little secret river.
Doesn't help that I sneak out in the early hours with some wheat to attract the wood pigeons onto their bonnets....

cant believe the comments bit is closed I wanted to ask Leo how much rubbish he picked up or did he just walk past it :wh

Coelacanth said:

My car did get a wash this morning - it rained. The only thing I have dirtier than my car is my girlfriend. People avoid crashes with me just because they don't want to get their's mucky.
Unfortunately, if I look at the driveways around me, there are Mercs each side, and across is a Merc, then a Cayenne, a 911 and some idiotic big red thing, all of which cause the road to be awash with soapy water every time the sun comes out, straight down the surface drains and into my little secret river.
Doesn't help that I sneak out in the early hours with some wheat to attract the wood pigeons onto their bonnets....

Click to expand...

As I observed in a thread about "big", bad, fish-eating furry jobs the other evening, we need to be looking closer to home:


"We should, perhaps, start by taking a very long, hard, assessing look at the most topping of top-end predators around - at ourselves, people who today want it ALL for nothing or for mere no-cost pence and to be there 'like yesterday', because the telly and some very iffy papers tell us that we're 'worth it' - faster-wider-safer roads, bigger-faster-sexier-bird-pulling cars, wifey-pleasing homes (one is not enough, are three?), pools, power showers, multiple domestic and foreign holidays - unsustainable in the numbers we are now and far greater tomorrow - not merely want but expect as some sort of human right...

Occupants of ever-bigger, better-plumbed glasshouses set in a de-natured, concreted-over suburban hinterland feeling in their unpoken desperation the need to chuck stones at anything but themselves...

Meanwhile, the few wild or semi-wild bits and creatures that we haven't boogered up in our blinkered, I'm not to blame, greed try to carry on as they've always done and get shafted for doing so.

Ho hum. "

On a more serious note than my first post in this thread, it's these conditions that really worry me regarding recruitment, before fish ever get to the size where they become a target for anglers (or any other predator).
I'd like to see some decent studies done on stomach contents/condition on fry/young fish at various river levels across a range of catchments.
Low water might greatly restrict feeding, which then leave the fry unable to grow and energy-deficient when the inevitable happens and we go from drought to flood in 12 hours.
It's possibly made worse when (as happened last Summer on the Ribble) some kind of groundworks activity somewhere along the course leads to water that looks like weak hot chocolate while still being low, which makes life all the harder for sight-feeding fry.

I watched the bream, roach and carp spawning on the river on Monday when it was 30c. Last night it absolutely hammered down with rain! I haven't been to the river today, but I fear for the spawn that might be making its way down the Bristol Channel right now. There's more heavy rain forecast for Saturday, I hope there's not going to be another year class missing

I don't wash my car Fred, the dirt ptotects the paintwork

HIGH TEMPERATURES? Only for last weekend, the rest of the time its been b****y freezing. Brass ******* everywhere. Low water due to cold but very dry May.
A resi that I fish is being drained of 2 ft every week just to top up the mains as there is a leek SOMEWHERE. Well find it and fix it.
Well we have had our summer, 2 days over the weekend, back to normal now though need more rain for the rivers.

Not guilty.

I never clean my car.

It makes a mess on my drive and there's no way I'm having that after spending all last weekend jet washing it.....