Britains worst river

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captainbarnacles

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yes i watched it this morning, pretty discracefull , dead fish floating ,sewage being pumped into a river , but at least the guy from the rspb was looking after our dear cormerants for us. Making a nice habitat for them to live in.
 
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jasonbean1

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my mistake ........not quite britains worst river just england and wales

Did it not win a big award lately for how clean it was?
 
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elliottwaters

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Sorry. but I have to disagree. I’m a Londoner in my 50’s and fish the river a lot. Much of my fishing is done in the tidal stretches from Teddington down wards and its now possible to catch fish in the middle of London, - something that would have been unheard of thirty years ago. I can’t speak for the upper stretches, but in my view the Thames has definitely improved. Funny thing is, there are far fewer anglers seem to fish it now than when I started out in the 1960’s.

OK, the Lower Thames will never compete with the Wye, the Avon or the Severn in terms of scenery, but let’s give the EA credit where it’s due.
 
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geoffmaynard

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perchy said:
Sorry. but I have to disagree. I’m a Londoner in my 50’s and fish the river a lot. Much of my fishing is done in the tidal stretches from Teddington down wards and its now possible to catch fish in the middle of London, - something that would have been unheard of thirty years ago. I can’t speak for the upper stretches, but in my view the Thames has definitely improved. Funny thing is, there are far fewer anglers seem to fish it now than when I started out in the 1960’s.

OK, the Lower Thames will never compete with the Wye, the Avon or the Severn in terms of scenery, but let’s give the EA credit where it’s due.
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So... where are the better spots to catch fish in Central London? Waterloo Bridge? Anything there other than eels? What tackle, methods and baits do you use?
 
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cg74

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perchy said:
Sorry. but I have to disagree. I’m a Londoner in my 50’s and fish the river a lot. Much of my fishing is done in the tidal stretches from Teddington down wards and its now possible to catch fish in the middle of London, - something that would have been unheard of thirty years ago. I can’t speak for the upper stretches, but in my view the Thames has definitely improved. Funny thing is, there are far fewer anglers seem to fish it now than when I started out in the 1960’s.

OK, the Lower Thames will never compete with the Wye, the Avon or the Severn in terms of scenery, but let’s give the EA credit where it’s due.
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Credit for what?

Banning DDT's, well they seem to champion this as one major success, even though they were banned 12 years before the agency was formed.

Manage, maintain and improve our fisheries, well they've not fulfilled any of their pledges on that front up in Oxfordshire, well I suppose they've 'managed' them, only very poorly!!

Why then if they do such a good job is the biodiversity on most English and Welsh rivers actually in decline:
Eels suffering a 95%+ drop in numbers over the last 30 years.
Water voles rapidly disappearing. The UK population has fallen from its estimated pre-1960 level of around 8 million to 2.3 million in 1990 and to 354,000 now.
Aquatic insects such as Damsel fly and Dragonfly becoming increasingly less common place.
Fish stocks on most rivers (Thames most definitely included) actually falling year after year since the formation of the agency.

With such vast improvements in water quality, why are our rivers about the dirtiest in europe??


Three cheers for the EA's sterling work. hip hip............ :rolleyes:
 
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The Thames is a fine river, it seems to me that the infrastructure that should be in place to protect it from the effects of industry and the burgeoning population of London just isn't there - the sewers are Victorian, moreover it would take many years and a lot of investment to put it right and this is not the fault of the EA.

The money spent on the 'new' Wembley or the Olympics would have gone a long way to change the river for the better. But it seems the great and the good would sooner having an open sewer running though London.

George Osbourne, like a lot of Chancellors before him, is unlikely to sanction the money to sort out this river given the Governments desire to drive down the National debt. I suspect a large proportion of my rod licence has been syphoned off the EA to pay for some part of government policy, so who knows where our taxes are going?
 
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elliottwaters

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It’s not all doom and gloom on the Lower Thames. I grew up in south London in the 1960’s and nothing survived in the river in central London apart from rats and eels. If you fell in, local legend had it that you were taken to hospital for a stomach pump.

Fast forward 40 years and I’ve caught dace, roach, bream and carp as far downstream as Batttersea. Wandsworth is good for trotting for dace; there are carp to be caught in Chelsea Creek. Putney and Battersea are also good and I have bream to six pounds on the feeder. None of this would have been possible forty, or even twenty years ago. I hear a lot of talk about the Lower Thames being a shadow of its former self, yet I wonder if this has anything to do with fewer anglers fishing it, and therefore fewer catch reports? When I started out in the 1960’s, car ownership was much lower, many anglers relied on public transport and the Thames was the principal venue for London based anglers. These days the combination of mass car ownership and the growth of commercial fisheries within the M25 mean the Thames is much less popular. Parking is also a hassle if you want to fish the Thames in London and access to the waterside can sometimes be difficult. You have the check the tides, river tactics are a closed book to many anglers these days and its little wonder that the Thames is much less fished than it was.

I’m not saying the EA is perfect, far from it, and I’m angry at its neglect of one of my favourite little rivers, the Darent in north west Kent, now a shadow of its former self. The EA’s record on tackling the water companies over abstraction also leaves much to be desired.
 
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guest61

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perchy said:
It’s not all doom and gloom on the Lower Thames. I grew up in south London in the 1960’s and nothing survived in the river in central London apart from rats and eels. If you fell in, local legend had it that you were taken to hospital for a stomach pump.

Fast forward 40 years and I’ve caught dace, roach, bream and carp as far downstream as Batttersea. Wandsworth is good for trotting for dace; there are carp to be caught in Chelsea Creek. Putney and Battersea are also good and I have bream to six pounds on the feeder. None of this would have been possible forty, or even twenty years ago. I hear a lot of talk about the Lower Thames being a shadow of its former self, yet I wonder if this has anything to do with fewer anglers fishing it, and therefore fewer catch reports? When I started out in the 1960’s, car ownership was much lower, many anglers relied on public transport and the Thames was the principal venue for London based anglers. These days the combination of mass car ownership and the growth of commercial fisheries within the M25 mean the Thames is much less popular. Parking is also a hassle if you want to fish the Thames in London and access to the waterside can sometimes be difficult. You have the check the tides, river tactics are a closed book to many anglers these days and its little wonder that the Thames is much less fished than it was.

I’m not saying the EA is perfect, far from it, and I’m angry at its neglect of one of my favourite little rivers, the Darent in north west Kent, now a shadow of its former self. The EA’s record on tackling the water companies over abstraction also leaves much to be desired.
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Well said.

Mark
 
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alan whittington

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m a brooks said:
Well said.

Mark
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The middle Thames up is a fine river,with a third of the fish population it had 20 or so years ago(imo),with clubs giving up water because they cant attract members to pay the rent,you can have my fine river and i will move somewhere near the Ribble,i fish the Thames most weeks and have first hand knowledge of its drop from greatness,sadly.:(
 
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guest61

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alan whittington said:
The middle Thames up is a fine river,with a third of the fish population it had 20 or so years ago(imo),with clubs giving up water because they cant attract members to pay the rent,you can have my fine river and i will move somewhere near the Ribble,i fish the Thames most weeks and have first hand knowledge of its drop from greatness,sadly.:(
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Ok Alan, if you prefer 'Well said' Mr perchy, for standing your ground and calling it as you see it.

As regards the Thames

I feel for anglers who have to deal with the disgusting state of the lower Thames (Faeces floating down the open river plus lord alone what else) - but the initial posts in this thread were pointing the finger at the EA. Although these days they are the Government agency that is responsible for rivers, as is often the case, there is a long story of a lack of investment - and that was my point about the EA. It is a fine river, but has suffered through a lack of investment.

Come on up to the North West - get off the property ladder in the South East, grab yourself a housing bargain (work maybe another matter) - Chester is a decent place and equi-distant for the Ribble and the Severn, and the Welsh Dee is on your doorstep.

Mark
 
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The bad one

The bad one

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alan whittington said:
The middle Thames up is a fine river,with a third of the fish population it had 20 or so years ago(imo),with clubs giving up water because they cant attract members to pay the rent,you can have my fine river and i will move somewhere near the Ribble,i fish the Thames most weeks and have first hand knowledge of its drop from greatness,sadly.:(
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Alan mate, don't believe everything you hear or read about the Ribble it has it's problems.
It not the river it was when I first started fishing it 30+ years ago. There are vast gaps in the year classes of it's fish. It's roach stocks disappeared for over 20 years, just making a comeback slowly now and that down to a major stocking policy by the EA 6-8 years ago. Grayling are in the main absent from the river in areas where they should teem with them.
Brown trout even though some of the game only on clubs the lower upper and upper river stock them annually, are declining.

At the moment it's riding a big fish boom, but that boom is cloaking some of the underlining problems it suffering from.

A true assessment of it is, it's still, marginally, a sustainable fishery, but needs hawkish watching and campaigning to stop it tipping into an unsustainable one.
 
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Colin North the one and only

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One cannot compare the Thames with the Wye. Apart from the fact that the Thames is longer, it flows through some fairly big towns (e.g. Reading, Maidenhead etc) on its way to our capital city and beyond, where it is used heavily by commercial traffic etc. I would guess that about 95% of the Wye flows through open countryside, and I doubt it has any commercial traffic on it at all. It is like comparing chalk with cheese.
 
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cg74

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Steve King said:
The has been an improvement in the Thames over the years, and when they sort out the sewers spilling out raw sewage when it rains it will be better still.

International Riverfoundation
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And when it rains the lock gates are opened up, whoosh straight into the sea, flood prevention prevails and the environment is just an expendable luxury.

"And when they sort out the sewers spilling out raw sewage."
Do you envisage that being anytime soon?
BBC - Gregory's First Law: Unregulated sewer overflow pipes
Bearing in mind that the EA keep requesting deferrals on the date our rivers should reach the EU grade of good, originally 2015, then 2021 and now 2027.

Also worth a look at, though the full length report was more scathing and had a representative from WWF saying how poor it all is.
BBC News - Thames voted 'worst river' in England and Wales
 
Steve King

Steve King

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Good grief!! The Wandle has been voted 5th best river!!!!

It is much improved I grant you, but it is canalised and full of rubbish - the piles of trolleys, bikes, prams, tyres etc etc the Wandle Trust hauls out each month is unbelievable!!
 
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alan whittington

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Ive fished the upper/middle Thames for many,many years,the catches that we used to get,consistently were amazing,especially looking back from the present time,ive caught more than 30 goodish chub(2.5lb-4.5lb)in a day more than a couple of times,40lbs+ of decent roach,large catches of bream,intermingled with barbel,tench and good perch,i dont catch the equivilent of a decent catch of chub in a season,the EA and it seems the clubs dont give a flying fig,nearly every river shows varying degrees of decline,but when i fish the D.Stour it fishes mega compared to the Thames.
 
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