Another thought provoking article from Mark, many thanks.
I have for a long time now thought that one of the major reasons for the decline of the Dace fishing (and to some degree the Roach fishing too) on the Hampshire Avon has been due to the increases in both quantity and quality of the Barbel population.
If you think back to the golden days of the Avon from the mid 70's say, the Barbel were rarely caught much above the Royalty Fishery whilst the Dace and Roach shoals were very evident right upstream to above Salisbury.
These days you can catch Barbel up to and above Salisbury and the Dace have all but disappeared.
On the estate where I used to have the old cottage there were Barbel in the weirstream and that is about 5 miles above Salisbury but they were electro netted everfy years as the stretch is a Fly only venue.
There are still a few productive pockets of Dace in areas like the Downton club stretch and at the top of the Hale Syndicate, but generally speaking the Dace are but distant memories.
I am told that there are some good Dace shoals still in parts of the Nadder and I saw few reasonable sized Dace in the Ebble last weekend when I was out fish spotting.
I have for a long time now thought that one of the major reasons for the decline of the Dace fishing (and to some degree the Roach fishing too) on the Hampshire Avon has been due to the increases in both quantity and quality of the Barbel population.
If you think back to the golden days of the Avon from the mid 70's say, the Barbel were rarely caught much above the Royalty Fishery whilst the Dace and Roach shoals were very evident right upstream to above Salisbury.
These days you can catch Barbel up to and above Salisbury and the Dace have all but disappeared.
On the estate where I used to have the old cottage there were Barbel in the weirstream and that is about 5 miles above Salisbury but they were electro netted everfy years as the stretch is a Fly only venue.
There are still a few productive pockets of Dace in areas like the Downton club stretch and at the top of the Hale Syndicate, but generally speaking the Dace are but distant memories.
I am told that there are some good Dace shoals still in parts of the Nadder and I saw few reasonable sized Dace in the Ebble last weekend when I was out fish spotting.