Roach Explosion

Now and again we witness the appearance or disappearance of certain species of fish over a period of time.
Are waters across the country experiencing a Roach explosion this year? These are not just Roach that have been introduced by man either.

A number of waters that I fish are featuring good bags of Roach, more than usual. Is this simply down to the hot summer that we have just had, or are they making a comeback? What affect would a Roach explosion have on predators such as Pike and cormorants? I think it is true that certain species have a three or four year cycle of either disappearing, and them coming back in greater numbers.
What exactly is it that makes fish behave in this way?

First of all, over the past few years we have had a few very hot spells during early summer. This has given the roach especially, excellent spawing conditions. Secondly, and dare I say it - there are not as many cormorants around as there used to be.

I don't see anything like as many of these birds as 10 years ago.

It depends on the weather during the spawning period and in the following months as the fry grow bigger.

A warm spring and a long dry summer is good for the fry of most coarse fish.

Heavy rainstorms during summer can wash away many of the fry in rivers.

I should imagine this spring and summer has been ideal for coarse fish spawning and fry survival.

I hope Baz is right because I would love to see good redfins back in the River Torne and Clumber Park.
Ron I observed a few cormorants having the time of their lives on a local canal yesterday.
I bet they could hardly take off again they were getting so many fish.

Congratulations on your 2lb plus Roach in last weeks A.T. Michael. Hope to see you at the Idle Fish-In.

Roach have allways been comeing out steadily, but this year there seems to be more of them.
I am comparing the appearence/disapearence of Roach in the same way that crucians seem to disapear from time to time. Or in the same way that big Perch stop getting caught. The Perch seem to go in a four year cycle.

I was just wondering if this was natures way of keeping a ballance? But surely there must be a more logical explanation.

There are defintitely more roach coming out of the Thames this season! Big ones too!

I put it down to the excellent spawining conditions this summer with our exceptionally hot spells and also the lack of flow on the Thames meaning that fry are not getting washed away.

The balance that nature keeps often wobbles. A prime example that was studied in depth was arctic hares and foxes - with few other species about to complicate the picture. Numbers of hares would build up, and so there would be more food for foxes. Well-fed foxes breed successfully, so the following year, the hares would take a bit more of a hammering. After a few years, there'd be hardly any hares, and nearly all the foxes would starve. Next season, with no predation, the hares do well...
This boom-and-crash dynamic gets smoothed out as more predator/prey relationships get woven into the picture, but they still happen. I suspect that a lot of what we see in the fish population reflects events in the invertebrate community a year or two ago; but sometimes it is just down to a successful year-class of one species dying off and revealing what else had been there for ages. An example would be the dace boom in the tidal Thames in the 1970's - this came after a boom (plague) of bleak. One year, there were no bleak, just rafts of herring-sized dace. These were old fish, they must have been in the river for years, but we couldn't get a dace-sized bait near them before!


P.S it may have been lynxes rather'n foxes ... I read about it in 1973-ish... anyway, they had an "X" and ate hares.

Thanks Baz.
I will be coming down, but whether I fish or not depends on what time I finish work.
My mate tells me that everything goes in cycles and that the roach will return. I hope your both right, because they do seem to be disappearing from natural waters.
My local cases are the River Torne where there were huge shoals of roach from ounces up to monsters.
Clumber Park which again had a huge head of quality roach from ounces up to the many 2 pounders it produced.
In both these waters you would be doing very well to catch a roach of any size.
Father affield is the Hampshire Avon and Dorset Stour which are a shadow of their former selves, plus the Upper Kennet which I have seen wasting away before my eyes.
3 years ago I could catch numbers of big roach from a few areas on the river, but now there are just a handfull of decent roach left.
I'm alarmed at the vanishing roach and do hope it's a cycle. I'm concerned however that it could be a permanent thing due to cormorants, climatic change or something else.
Thats why most of my autumn / winter fishing is after roach and dace, fish that may not be with us in a generation ( Except commercials )

The roach is by far and away my favourite British fish. If I had to choose one species I could fish for for the rest of my life I would choose the roach. And I am in good company too. **** Walker said the same, so did Fred J Taylor.

I certainly do hope that decent roach are coming back to the Torne. It's a lovely little river with lots of features and not far from where I live. During the 60s, pound roach were quite common on the Torne.

The other river not so far away is the Went.

Can you tell us about this river Mike. It did produce some rather large roach in the 70s but these catches were kept under wraps.

Its a shame the numbers of Rudd are slowly dwindling, hopefully their numbers will soar soon as they are beautiful fish.