I love this modern phrase, even though I’m not exactly sure of its meaning? I’ve been guessing it is simply acknowledging a problem, talking about it, but not getting anything much at all done? Which brings me to this week’s article in the Angling Times on “What Future For Iconic Wensum?” The piece was put together by the excellent Dominic Garnett, for whom I have nothing but time and admiration, but he fell completely into the trap I knew would be waiting for him. In short, the message was hijacked by the usual suspects, who have dogged any hope of a Wensum revival for nigh on thirty years.
When Dominic phoned me for my views on a river that gave me hundreds of two pound roach in its prime, I warned him to be wary of the official line peddled by the Environment Agency, and other quasi-official bodies that have emerged to put the Wensum right. Dominic’s last paragraph sums up exactly what I knew and feared he would be told so I’ll quote it in full. “The (Environment) Agency also told us that its priority was restoring the river and improving the quality of habitats to support healthy fish populations rather than stocking per se. Experts tend to see stocking as a problematic, short-term fix, compared with creating fry refuges, flow deflectors and improvements to build a sustainable revival.”
Well! Where to start? Let’s start by that “kicking of the can” and say that this is exactly the selfsame message the EA has been preaching since the mid-Nineties, during which time numbers of fish in the Wensum have plummeted year on year. And even when the talk gives way to action, the EA mucks it up. One example. Years ago, the Authority spent God knows how much on fry refuges at Swanton Morley, on the mid-river. Within three years, without any maintenance work, the reeds had encroached so densely you could see no sign whatsoever of the work that had been carried out. Money tossed into the wind, as ever.
I’ll freely admit that I see judicious stocking and protection of stocks as twin ways to put the Wensum back on her feet, and I resent the inference made by the EA that I am some sort of dolt for doing so. OF COURSE, I want to see the river habitat improve, which it has done vastly since the Nineties, by the way. OF COURSE, I want to see less domestic, agricultural and industrial pollution, along with less abstraction. OF COURSE, I want to see more riffles, more woody debris, more ranunculus, and more of everything a healthy river needs. I’d be a complete fool if I said these things were not important.
BUT the fact is that the Wensum is not in that bad a state. The Angling Times piece showed me with a two pound roach caught just before lockdown. That roach is living proof that the river is quite able to house such fish, providing there are enough of them to sustain their populations, and that they are given some sort of chance to establish themselves, safe from exorbitant levels of predation.
Proof? For short periods this century, stretches of the Wensum have been stocked quietly with roach from adjoining gravel pits where they were not wanted. These fish, btw, were originally Wensum fish, so they were simply returned in numbers from whence they or their ancestors had come. These returnees were then carefully looked after through a couple of winters, and the worst of the cormorant attacks on them were deterred. The result? In each and every case, whilst the experiment was continued, the roach settled and the fishing became as good as it had been in the Sixties.
So, it is easier, and more profitable, to build this and that along the river and collect ever more data, just like the EA has been doing this past quarter of a century. The fact that none of this work has made barely any discernible difference must be apparent even to them if they were honest about admitting it. Anglers everywhere, not just in Norfolk, are pawns in the game played by “fishery experts”. Habitat improvement is important, but it has become an unwelcome shibboleth before which we all must bow.
