Rivers Well Travelled

[John Bailey]

Many of us were brought up in our fishing infancy by the wise words of Mr Crabtree, aka Bernard Venables. Yes, baits and methods were covered in Crabtree, but perhaps the abiding memory was always the insistence on watercraft, the core of what fishing is all about for me, probably you. I have no doubt watercraft is massive on stillwaters, but I have been beginning to wonder about its present-day importance on rivers. My slight reservations were given a nudge by an excellent piece by Denise Ashton in the recent Wild Trout Trust magazine, entitled Trout Travellers. Much of what she said is of course trout-focused, but the piece is broader than that in my view and encompasses most river species… apart from perhaps gudgeon and bullhead! What I propose to do is not quite an article of the old school, but more a list of points and observations that might trigger responses of your own?

THE BIG TROUT LIE


Otters flush many big fish into new territory

A very obvious otter kill

The traditional big trout lie. Denise queries whether the concept of a lie being occupied and held by a specific big fish for years is a true one. We can all think of examples where this has happened, but perhaps these instances are exceptions rather than rules. I always liked this concept myself and tried to apply it to not just trout but chub and barbel as well. These five years past, though, I have been forced to give up on it, and accept that all big fish use lies for a while, but nowhere near as long as they did in the 70s and 80s. My observations on endless intimate rivers, where sighting is possible, suggests that otters are the biggest factor in this change. Big fish of all species are nowhere near as relaxed as they once were, and much more likely to move lie frequently. Angling pressure has exactly the same effect, so I am not blaming otters exclusively.

NOT THE STAY-AT-HOME TYPE


Barbel… great travellers everywhere

Denise cites one River Deveron brown moving 84 kms over the course of a month. This was not a stay-at-home type fish, for sure, and if you had tried to target it in a specific lie you wouldn’t have had much luck. But that fish is not unusual I’m thinking. EA research on the Broadland rivers has recently proved that bream and pike, especially, rarely keep still, but can be almost on continual migration. Spawning, spring tides, salt tides and temperature changes are considerations, but fish move all the time irrespective of these. I have personal knowledge of individual chub swimming two miles in a morning, and barbel even further than that on a regular basis.

OFF DOWN-RIVER


Abstraction has made many upper rivers too hot in the summer

Denise wonders if trout tend to move downstream as they grow. Probably. The head waters where they are born might be too shallow in heat or too poor in food for bigger fish to tarry there. But I feel much the same might happen on many rivers with many species. Take the Wensum. The upper river has long held small chub, and a very few big ones, but has never been prolific. It is very much my suspicion that as chub reach a pound or so, they wander down-river. Looking back, I am semi-sure that roach behaved the same.

WEIRS NO BARRIER


Even bullheads get displaced by floods and hunted by predators

Denise wonders how weirs and mill sluices impede fish movements, and soon we might have to add beavers’ dams to the study. Karen Twine, that excellent fish biologist, told me that her work on the Ouse showed conclusively that tagged barbel routinely climbed and descended weirs with little effort. My own Wensum experiences from 1980 ’till the present day mirror this exactly. I have caught/seen barbel two or three weirs up/down from their original sighting/catching place. Chub are the same and in my experience use the whole river, and not just the section they find themselves in.

VULNERABLE ROACH


The killer cormorant beak

A classic example of cormorant damage

Denise does think that weirs and sluices might slow migrating fish down, and make them vulnerable as a result. She uses the example of 80% of tagged Tweed sea trout smolts that disappeared above one weir alone. She suggests fish-eating birds were the culprits. I have no doubt that roach suffer the exact fate. Repeatedly this century I have located large numbers of Wensum roach happily in situ above mills for some weeks… until cormorants find them. Sometimes the annihilation is complete. In winter 2005/06 there were in excess of 25,000 smallish roach above Lenwade Mill on the middle Wensum. I lead a couple of groups to India in January and February and on my return, every roach had gone. I was told 40/50 cormorants had been in residence for nine weeks and had hoovered the lot. Some might have escaped through the mill sluices but it must have been a case of devil and the deep blue sea. It does not, however, have to be a barrier to create the conditions for this carnage. Many times I have been aware of roach concentrations that gather and swell in numbers, and then are located and completely wiped out by flocks of cormorants that target the area for as long as it takes.

SERIOUS FLOODING


Water everywhere

This winter much of England has seen serious, prolonged flooding. My fear is that very many fish have been displaced by this, possibly fatally. On my local rivers, prior to Christmas, there were several “hot” roach areas where big bags could be taken by my friends. Over the more settled conditions of the last two weeks, these friends have returned and without exception the roach have vanished completely. There is nothing new in this. Back in the Eighties, a large percentage of Wensum roach were flushed, winter after winter, down-river into the centre of Norwich where phenomenal bags were taken. Deep dredging and bad sluice control were almost certainly to blame for this and both factors are still at play today. Long areas of Wensum still show the scars of dredging forty years back, and some sluices are privately and badly controlled, basically thrown open and the river allowed to surge through. I doubt the electronically-operated EA sluices are any better, however. Think too of the huge numbers of bream caught by trawlers in the ‘70s and ‘80s in the Wash, of all places. These fish had been washed down the Relief Channel, and out to sea, by failure to control flow patterns once again.

MANY REASONS TO WANDER


A frightening world of otter droppings

Sad end to a big roach

I would totally agree with Denise that left to themselves most river species will move up and down river, sometimes frequently, and that they have been doing this since time began. However, this century many factors have come into play that have hugely increased this tendency. Abstraction has made smaller, upper rivers and tributaries uncomfortably low and overly hot during warmer summers. This means fish, large and small, are far more likely to wander down-river for as long as it takes to find better habitat. The huge increase in otter numbers has put all big fish on constant red alert, and made them much more likely to desert established lies far more frequently than before the otters’ return. It is no good repeating the old mantra that our rivers have always held otters. Back when they did, there were far more fish in existence, and the pressure on large individual specimens was less intense.

A DESPERATE PROBLEM


A caption hardly needed

Cormorants – and goosanders – are a relatively new and desperate problem. They target conglomerations of all smaller fish, whether salmon smolts or roach, and either devour them or scatter them to oblivion. The effect on all stocks is devastating. Tweed salmon. Frome grayling. Stour roach. This is a nationwide problem. Warmer, immeasurably wetter winters are here to stay. The floods we have witnessed this year are colossally damaging, and push fish even to the sea itself – think of those Relief Channel bream. Dredged rivers, badly operated sluices, and bad floodplain management make the carnage worse.

‘GONE FISHING’ GOOD FOR ME


Grayling too face hard times

This piece started out in my head as an interesting and comparatively light look at fish migration. However, the more I considered it, and the more examples I mulled over, the darker my notes became. Things are bad in the East of England, but I have to say that working for Mortimer and Whitehouse: Gone Fishing these past four years has been good for me. Both researching and filming, I have travelled the length and breadth of the UK, and there are not many river systems that are not experiencing the problems I have outlined. The big questions are what we do about all this, and what use do Bernard Venables’ lovely river swim diagrams serve today?

The post Rivers Well Travelled first appeared on FishingMagic Magazine.

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[Peter Jacobs]

Some great information and a thought-provoking article, many thanks John.

 

[mikench]

Ditto. I enjoyed your article. I have no affinity with cormorants and would agree to their extermination on our rivers and lakes. They need culling.

 

[rob48]

If current surface water and land drainage practice was reversed so that more water was allowed to leach gradually into rivers through the ground instead of being discharged at speed through pipes the rivers would hold some colour for longer and give the prey fish a chance against the cormorants.

 

[xenon]

If current surface water and land drainage practice was reversed so that more water was allowed to leach gradually into rivers through the ground instead of being discharged at speed through pipes the rivers would hold some colour for longer and give the prey fish a chance against the cormorants.

The problem needs addressing at source-shoot the buggers.

 

[John Aston]

Interesting and thought provoking. Here's my take -

- Anglers and conservationists are natural pessimists, and while I don't subscribe to a Candide like 'everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds' , it isn't all bad news. I grew up in the industrial heart of the West Riding , and the rivers and canals I knew - Aire and Calder especially , were utterly devoid of life . They're not any more . That pattern can be seen across our former industrial heartlands, from Sheffield to Manchester, from the Tyne to the Thames

- I now live in the country . But even here , I know of upland streams which were dead from lead mining washings, or impoverished from sheep dip run off , but are now alive with fish .

- I never saw any birds of prey as a kid in the Sixties . But in the typical week I will see Kites , Buzzards, Kestrels and Sparrow Hawks . In most years I see osprey, goshawk and peregrine . As for kingfishers , I never saw one until I was in my twenties - but a common sight now .

-OTTERS !. The hottest of hot potatoes , of course , and the subject which can trigger streams of obscenities from many anglers. My experience is more nuanced ,and let me say too that I still get a thrill when I see one. (As I did ten days ago , half an hour before catching a big chub ). Otters undoubtedly can cause havoc in still waters, especially in heavily stocked ones . Akin to foxes in hen houses. But in rivers? Let me give some facts about my own patch - I fish about 20 miles of stream and river for wild brown trout and grayling . Each club requires catch returns, one on pain of death The returns , in some cases, go back well over a century. Otters re- appeared about 25 years ago and are a fairly common sight. Without exception, the catch returns have either remained unchanged , or , more commonly, have improved , with more fish and bigger specimens .

I don't know why that is , but it is fact and perhaps an inconvenient truth for those who think that otters always have a bad effect on fisheries. On my coarse rivers - Pennine spate rivers- chub and barbel populations seem to have declined , especially in the last five years or so. Again , otters have been around for 20-25 years. I have found the very odd dead barbel of chub , true, but only a handful in a decade , far , far fewer than the number of carp I have seen dead in lakes.

So what is the problem ? The only intelligent answer I can give is that I don't know . Anglers are often fairly simple souls who like simple narratives - see an otter (other scapegoats , human and avian , are available ) and bingo - that's why I blanked . The trouble with that simplistic approach is that it can conceal much deeper rooted , but often invisible causations . Climate Change - does any angler with a functioning brain really believe it isn't real ? Pollution, including agricultural run off . Abstraction -how many anglers have ever investigated this , let alone objected to an application ? And , most of all on my rivers, catastrophic flooding with violent changes of flow and huge damage to the river bed. One local river I've fished for 40 years had great growths of streamer weed , wonderful habitat for fry and invertebrates, until the mid 90s - and now it is nearly all gone, ripped out by huge and regular floods. I suspect poor fry recruitment and loss of habitat , and talks I have had with EA guys (and there's some bloody good ones ) seem to confirm this as a likely cause - or even the cause . It is intriguing that the small tributary of the Swale , running 20 yards from my house , is home to an abundance of chub , dace, grayling and trout - despite being home also to otters. But it rarely floods in a damaging way and there's weed and cover . And bloody signals ...

I mentioned inverts - and I am shocked at how little many anglers know about them , and how little interest they show in what are the key building blocks to a healthy river. 'Restock' they say - but what if is there's nothing for the fish to eat ? I do regular bug sampling on my main trout river and once offered to do the same for a local club who were convinced there was something up with their river - I am still waiting for them to accept .

BUT , regardless of one's own experience or views on otters, you are deluding yourself if you think any politician would ever even contemplate an otter cull. Don't some people ever read the news ? Have they not followed the badger cull saga ? Or heard of PETA , the RSPCA, Chris Packham or the court of public opinion ? Otters are here to stay , like it or lump it .

CORMORANTS - I think they represent a far greater threat than any mammalian predator , and for one simple reason. Otters , foxes and mink have territories and and any environment will only support a limited number of predators, determined by the supply of prey . Cormorant don't have territories in a conventional sense - they can fly a long way and , worse still , can hunt in packs. I've seen 50 plus at work in one bay of my local gravel pit . But angler apathy strikes again - sure , we can moan and whinge- but the take up of cull licences is pitiful . I have shot a few -lawfully- but all you really need to do is regularly to scare them, at least in my own direct experience. And how may anglers even bothered to sign the petition last year to remove cormorants' protected status ? We're good at moaning , but if more of us actually did something positive for the sport - whether joining the Angling Trust or helping with fishery protection , improvement and monitoring ,the better off the sport would be. But , as it is , we are almost defined by our apathy .

 

[John Bailey]

I have to comment on grayson’s recent addition to the debate if I may. Throughout I think he is uncannily correct, and I agree with every word and only have things to add and corroborate. It is fascinating during my lifetime how some rivers have declined and others have flourished. My very early years were spent beside the river Goyt in greater Stockport, which ran different colours every day, dependent on what dyes were being pumped in from the textile mills. Then it was barren, today I am told you can catch grayling there. Can I suggest that in the 19th Century, rural rivers did well and that industrial rivers did not, but that the situation is now largely reversed? It might be that whilst industry has largely cleaned up its act, farming has done the reverse, and that modern agricultural chemicals are the kiss of death to the land and water both?

Can it also be that rural rivers are quieter than urban ones, which means that predation (largely airborne) is more severe? Grayson also points out rightly that cormorants can be scared away, but in my experience only if there is constant disruption like the traffic, walkers, dogs, and the general mayhem you get day and night within modern city limits. It is no good saying 'boo' to cormorants once a day out in the country, because they will simply hang about half an hour and be back. The Wensum is better in Norwich than up country, just like the Wye comes into its own in the middle of Hereford.

Insects. Indeed, they are the building blocks to any fish population, and there is absolutely no debate that modern day run-off has annihilated populations of many invertebrate species. However, my own kick sampling along the Wensum would suggest there are enough items there to support fish, if any were allowed to survive. Water quality and abstraction remain massive, largely ignored, challenges.

Otters. We’ll never see otters culled and nor should we. I doubt if anyone has more experience of otters on smaller rivers than I have, simply because of two decades guiding on waters like the Wensum and Bure. I have written endlessly that otters eat signal crayfish, wild/water fowl, mammals and fish in that order, and I’ll stand by my almost daily observations of this. Fish stocks can be pulverised in small, shallow estate lakes when otters first appear, but wherever wild fish survive they very soon learn about the otter threat, and develop defences in a way crayfish cannot. Older fish do become vulnerable, and the otter threat is especially high during very cold snaps when fish do slow down and render themselves catchable. Over very many years, I have seen heartbreaking sights, like a beheaded four pound Frome grayling, but these are few and far, between despite walking fifty miles of bank some weeks.

Cormorants. We are “almost defined by our apathy” says grayson and I would only disagree in so far as adding the words “completely defined”. In all my years of trying to gather support for my cormorant-scaring efforts I have received no help ever from anyone. The thought of getting up at 5.00am in January to walk a stretch of river with a starting pistol, like I have done, appears an impossible concept here, even to those who profess their enthusiasm for action. This is not the case in Slovenia, or at least it was not back ten years when I led trips there. There, the local club made attendance at cormorant control parties compulsory. Members had to donate something like 50 hours a winter to dawn sorties, guns, whistles, or whatever they had in hand. Each and every morning, cormorants were harried up and down the valley 'till they gave up... or whatever? And the fishing? Extraordinary as a result, with the rivers completely represented by every year group. But fancy proposing this initiative at your next AGM?

 

[John Aston]

John B - I'll confess I was being tactful about angler apathy . But I won't be now - the majority of anglers may not be short of opinion , or complaints ( otters, cormorants , EA , state of club pegs , need for restocking - you name it ) but far too many don't over burden themselves with facts, preferring opinion and conspiracy , and the majority put two parts of bugger all back into the sport . I'm no saint , I am inherently lazy , but I've been secretary , chair etc of various clubs for over 40 years , and it really isn't rocket science. But try to recruit a successor and all those normally opinionated guys at the AGM suddenly find a pressing need to inspect their shoes .

And cormorants .. sore point . I organise a cormorant watch for one club , as we knew we'd need a lot of evidence if we were to apply for a licence . We have 60 members , but less than 10% have even be arsed to email me even one sighting . And ask for volunteers to help a couple of us with bug sampling - silence. But hey - ask for an opinion on otters and get the same tired old rhetoric of shadowy do gooders reintroducing otters by the crate load . The irony of some of the same people being so outraged at the control of zander seems to escape them ...

This thread - about some of the fundamental challenges affecting our sport - has attracted fewer than ten comments. But one about a cheap Chinese bit of gear has over 70 -no criticism of contributors BTW , but don't the numbers bear eloquent testimony to the degree of angler engagement with our sport 's politics ?

 

[theartist]

This thread - about some of the fundamental challenges affecting our sport - has attracted fewer than ten comments. But one about a cheap Chinese bit of gear has over 70 -no criticism of contributors BTW , but don't the numbers bear eloquent testimony to the degree of angler engagement with our sport 's politics ?

To be fair to those on here many have been around for decades and have thousands of posts, Otters and Cormorants have been discussed on so many occasions. It's much like Barbed V Barbless The Close Season and a few others. Important issues granted but ones debated at length previously.

 

[john step]

Yes done to death previously just like Sensor and centre pins .

 

[Peter Jacobs]

I think to be fair we have to recognise that the site is constantly evolving with many new members, especially recently.

So, while some of these topics may appear at first glance to be, "old hat" to the new comers they are important and it is always good to hear new views, even on old topics . . . .

 

[theartist]

Couldn't agree more Peter, I was just giving one reason for the absence of posts, it's easy to think it's apathy when it isn't always

 

[Peter Jacobs]

Most of us "old hands" have a pretty firm view on Cormorants.

Where I do most of my fly fishing we have a licence to cull and typically on that stretch you will see a recently dug trench, with new turf atop, as a monument to the success of the keeper's skills with his 12 gauge . . .

Regarding Otters my views have changed somewhat in the last few years and while I still wish they had never been introduced (in the haphazard way there were) . . . . it seems that, locally, they are not doing a lot of damage and are incorporated now with the rest of the nature in the surrounding district.

 

[108831]

Otter predation affects I believe vary from river to river,with certain species being particularly prone to permanent decline,if numbers were limited to start with it doesn't take a rocket scientist to work out that successful recruitment would be unlikely,with cormorants and roach there is a chance of recovery,purely as roach can produce such large numbers of fry which is a vagary of herd fish,but if the river never was a holder of big stocks,it may never be capable of recovery,i've seen the GtOuse go from having good stocks of good roach,to being virtually devoid,to have fair numbers again,not that you catch them regularly,but they are there,barbel and chub however have declined as otters became more common,it is possible to see otters in broad daylight in Bedford town centre,regularly,summer and winter....