River Don Pollution

Bob touched on this in the Rother pollution thread but there was no detail at the time.

I've just had a call from a mate, Adam Roberts (also in DVSG) who's just got back from a tackle shop in Goole - FTD.

Apparently anglers were fishing the stretch above Sprotborough Weir as practice for a Drennan sponsored serious of some sort. This was about two weekes ago.

Everyone suddenly stopped catching and then half an hour later all the fish in the keepnets went belly up.

The pollution eminated from the Mexbrough area.

A friends and myself have caught fish from downstream in the Doncaster area since but the fishing has been below par.

Can anyone shed any more light on this?

Matt
There is no doubt about it that both the Rother and Don are still being polluted and its time more water sampling was done on both rivers plus the Dearne.I have fished both when suddenly for no reason they go dead and its pretty disturbing around Bow Bridge.
Some time ago when i was working as an Engineer at a company in Rotherham i saw a fellow in a flat truck emptying soluble oil into a stream that went into the Don.He had 10 45gallon drums on his truck and had false number plates. I orderd the fork trucks to block him in and called the EN agency and police.No doubt he received a ?30 fine.
Report this incident to the ACA and Enviroment Agency in Rotherham.
Just received a letter from ACA regarding Rother pollution

Matt
It just shows the apathy that we have in Yorkshire when a thread as important as this receives no attention or is it we are just used to pollution

Whilst the vast majority of anglers in South Yorkshire are intent on fishing noddy puddles, the pollution of the Don will mean nothing to them.

Sometime ago I heard the most negative comment in a tackle shop.......

No Clay, don't mention it, you'll get too many Labourites and Blair lovers complaining again!!!

Come on Ron,the labour party will arrange for all water to be polluted,so they don't have to ban angling. ;o)

All rivers live a precarious existence in the UK and may suffer pollution from many sources ? farming industry, chemical industry, wastewater treatment industry and many others besides. The list is virtually endless!

The rivers that are most likely to suffer more periodically are those running through heavily urbanised, older Victorian industrial towns and cities. And that unfortunately means the North and Midlands of the IK.
What must also be remembered is, the Victorian industrialist cared little about where their wastes form the factories went (no environmental regulation then), and the most convenient place to chuck it was in the local river, brook and stream, and/or on the spoil heap, which invariably had a runoff into the afore mentioned watercourses.

To illustrate this, some time ago, I had a conversation with a pollution control officer from the NW EA about the Mersey Catchment area, and he told me there was about 2000 historic drains draining into the river, which they didn?t know where they went, or what they were draining. He went on to say there are probably more that they haven?t found so far, as little in the way of records were kept by private landowners in this period when they put drains in to get rid of their waste.

If this is repeated across the two mentioned areas then the problem is huge, and a wonder we have any fish at all in urban rivers. The fact that we do is a credit to the EA and environmental protection legislation both nationally and from the EU we now have. Make no bones about it, the two principle reasons those fish can survive is because of the relatively clean headwater flows and discharge water from sewage treatment works mixing with the discharges coming from such bad sewers of unknown origin.

However and sadly, there are always going to be a combination of times and events, when the relatively clean water is overwhelmed by polluted waters come from the bad drains.

We as anglers have a duty to report all dodgy looking drains and drainage into the rivers to the EA. They in turn have a responsibility to investigate them and attempt to establish their origins and make the owners correct the problem, by prosecution if needs be. Only through this action will we both start to get on top of this problem.

You might think its strange for me to say this Phil but you are spot on

Adam and I popped into R & R Tackle in Bawtry on out way down to the Trent yesterday and Len Squire's lad knew all about the incident.

Apparently there were 3 lads from Ossett practicing for the Drennan Super League on a Wednesday about two and a half weeks ago.

They did see dead fish but they did look a few days old. Their fishing dies but the fish in their nest were OK.

A chap who works for Britannia (**** Clegg's company) got onto the EA.

Apparently the dead fish had floated down from the Rother and that although the fishing was affected the pollution was so diluted as not to have done any permanent damage to the Don.

However the lad in the tackle shop (I wish I knew his name) reckoned the Rother is almost a write off.

He is of the understanding that the Rother incident was caused by a chemical works at Chesterfield.

I also heard that some sort of report might be published in Angling Times.

I fished the Don the afternoon before last (after starting this thread) and it did smell polluted ? like it used to 20 years ago, but I caught a few fish.

I?m glad the Don is ok, but I feel for those who fish the Rother. I was hoping to be one of them myself soon.

The locals who fish the Catcliffe stretch of the Rother say that it hasn't really been affected. They are still catching, although the larger fish don't seem to be feeding as much.

I hope it's all been blown out of proportion and the majority of fish are ok.

Matt,
Fished the Don today behind the prison, the sport was very slow compared to the previous couple of weekends. We put it down mainly to the colder water, it struck through the waders nearly as soon as we got in the water.
I don't think that there has been a sudden downturn in sport, but it seems to be generally quieter this autumn, we shall have to see what the winter brings.

I've found it hard going since the season opened. I have fished it a lot this year and my returns are definately down.

I wondered if angling pressure might be an issue. There's been a lot of anglers behind the prison.

A good friend of mine is a regular at Sprotborough and he is way behind with barbel and the better chub this year, although he has done better with carp than previously.
I've said before to you that the prison stretch has not fished too well since the really bad floods of 3 or 4 years ago. It surprises me sometimes at the number of anglers that do fish there without really catching much at all.

My average Barbel catch was 7 fish per 4 hour trip for the first 2.5 months of the season last year. This season I'm down to less than 2 Barbel under the same circumstances.

I just put it down to the dodgy spring we had, low levels and extra angling pressure.

I'm looking forward to more cold and wet weather to clear the banks!

Problem with the Don Rother Dearne is that they flow near old pit workings and old chemical plants and its like Pandoras box waiting to be opened. The Don does not fish well with extra water on unless its dropping .Started fishing Spotborough in the early eighties well before they held matches and the roach fishing was terrific until the river stated to rise then it would turn a very black colour and the fish would not feed

Went for a walk to Treeton Dyke today, and I & a couple of friends heard blasting still going on at Orgreave open cast. This was supposed to have stopped weeks ago. My point is, could they have blasted into some chemicals (at some time) which have got washed into the river???

It's about time that the open casting at Orgreave stopped for good. Let's face it they are persuing what can almost be described as a medieval industry.

How long has that awful eyesore been there, certainly since I returned to Britain over 11 years ago.

It's the same with Coalite and Staveley Chemicals. And all the coal mines that exist on this fair isle. We do not need these industries chaps, nor the shit that they produce.

There are, I can assure you, much better ways.

Ron perhaps we don?t, but we do need their money to keep the pumps running in the mines they once owned. Because if those are turned off the Don and most other rivers in mining areas will run red with Iron Oxide and there?ll be no fish in them for a 1000 years.
John it looks like peace has broken out on this one between us!

John the blackness of the water when in flood is from those drains I?ve mentioned, road drains containing oil, rubber, plastic, PM 10s, acidic rain and any other nasties that might have found their way on to the roads. Road drains have only a rudimentary sump system and then it goes right into the river.
Oh! And in very high floods, by-pass water from sewage treatment works which has only been screened for large solids.

Now would you be inclined to feed in this soert of crap?

Phil, is this the case with all rivers, or just the ones in the ex-mining and ex-steelwowks areas?