Extracts from the experiences of a river angler, mostly barbel, but with comment and musings about other species, river wildlife and associated topics. All pictures will enlarge if you click on them.

It was a delight to spend a week in the sparsely populated French countryside, fishing a new, previously unfished swim every day, and trying out local restaurants, or a selection of fine wines, cheeses, bread and meat back at the farmhouse in the evenings. There were smallish powerful little barbel, bream, carp ,chub and nase, and although there are sileurs there up to forty pounds or so, we never contacted one, although some big heavy fish did get away in the rocks.

The fishing was simple and restful, with small pellets, corn or maggot combined with cage feeders and method mix, and an underarm lob with a centrepin in the smooth glides generally produced a fairly instant response. The fish are not big, but the surroundings and the ambience, and the friendly attitude of all the local pecheurs we met made it a most relaxing break. My French was rather good when I got a Grade 1 O level a good few years ago, but has become a bit rusty. It was good to awaken all that almost forgotten knowledge, and to share the French enthusiasm for fishing. My mate Steve could only manage the phrases "mange tout Rodney", and "Le Singe est dans l`arbre", which kept the Frenchies away from him most of the time, which suited him and them both really.

Must go again soon, I could easily become very keen on that sort of fishing.

There was loads of instream cover left in, commonly known as Large Woody Debris, but we added a bit of low cover in several places in the form of willow rafts that will provide direct overhead shelter and give chub and barbel safe hidey holes without being nasty snags. A bit of an experiment that we will be keeping an eye on this coming season. The removal of a lot of tangled straggly old willow on the banks has produced some access to terrific new swims, and the fishery looks a treat at the moment, although the initial shock when the work was first done was a cause of concern for some. This time of year produces growth of willow bushes from dead-looking stumps that is astounding, and a low bushy willow at the waters edge is much better for fish than a straggly overhanging attempt at a tree that is only providing shade. Some of the stumps at the waters edge are now little bushes two feet tall, and will make fine overhangs by mid summer. It was a shame to see the Himalayan Balsam in profusion, and there is a worry that it will oust the nettles and cause bank erosion when it dies and exposes bare soil in the winter. Nettles have tough root systems that are excellent at binding bankside soil, so I never worry about them on a river bank. This year I will pull up all the balsam I see at Bransford, and will encourage others to do the same.

This fishery is perhaps my favourite of all the BS fisheries, with safe secure and convenient parking, and a lot more swims now to try in a mile of water, with the option of sneaking into your own personal hidey hole. The fish are still there in good numbers and a there are rarely more than two or three anglers on the water, and most often you can have the fishery to yourself. Burt Lancaster came to a bit of an unfortunate end in that film at the hands of the Apache, but I am confident the Bransford story is going to have a very happy ending!

Trev and Budge have spent many hours planning and working on the project, and the learning curve has been steep and arduous, but they have worked a little miracle between them, and their efforts can only serve to give the Avon roach populations a helping hand, along with the habitat improvement work that is continuing to occur with the help of EA and other partners such as Natural England and the Rivers Trust.
The excavation and restoration of old oxbow lakes, backwaters ditches and water meadows will all contribute to the roach revival. A week later and I was watching barbel spawning in earnest on the Bristol Avon, with several groups of fish chasing and cavorting about on the gravels, with gangs of three or four little pale males harassing much bigger and darker coloured females. These big girls, ten to twelve pounders, would eventually settle in one spot and shudder vigorously, sending up clouds of silt and gravel as they deposited their eggs. The whole process was then repeated after a bit more chasing about. I have seen barbel spawning before in April, when similar warm temperatures stimulated an early spurt of activity.
The hatchlings should have an advantage in that they will have a longer growing season and a better chance of over wintering, I expect, but none of our assumptions can be certain. There is certainly a lot of evidence that the exceptional warm dry conditions of 1976 produced a healthy and numerous fish population of many species, and our monitoring of fish populations these days is much improved. Watch out for a barbel boom in five to ten years time if this warm spring continues into a repeat of `76.

There has been much speculation about declining barbel stocks and poor sport last year, but we may just be experiencing a natural cycle, an expected boom and bust in populations that is unavoidable and a healthy and normal process. Predators and pollution will have a role to play also, but may not be the only factor in population changes.

It was interesting to attend a presentation by the EA at the BS regional meeting in Bedfordshire last night, and note that the problems of the Stour are not that different to those on the Great Ouse, where the Great National Dredging of the late seventies and early eighties produced lengths of impounded water, with historical spawning gravels sacrificed in the process. Land drainage and navigation by barges was seen as more important than riverine habitats. Slackish flat bottomed reaches punctuated the barriers to fish in the form of weirs are not favourable to gravel spawners. We can not easily return the millions of tonnes of gravel, but there are ways of helping the rivers repair themselves. It could be that the decline in barbel stocks seen on the Stour, Ouse and Upper Thames are partly the result of those dredgings thirty years ago, and our current stock of doubles may well be that old.

Fish passes and habitat restoration are to be found in the current Water Framework Directive proposed actions, but let us hope that there will be the funding and the political will to make sure that damaged rivers are mended in our lifetimes. The EA project on the Great Ouse is looking at habitat that favours juvenile barbel, and they need all the information they can get on spawning sites, and present and historical catch returns, especially of small barbel. The BS will be helping all it can, so keep an eye out for more information on this one, and contribute to the spawning survey if you can, not just on the Ouse but all your rivers. We will be helping with funding some habitat work in the future as well.

The river looks very nice at this time of year, running quite low and clearing nicely, with signs of the green shoots of recovery in the sedge, nettle and willows after that harsh winter. The amazing growth of willow that has been damaged or cut back never ceases to impress me, and the willow coppiced and pollarded at the BS water at Bransford on the Teme will be springing into life now, albeit a little behind the regrowth to be seen on the more southerly Avon. Some pollards that I photographed last year are now about to green up, but the amount of sprouting that has occurred in less than a year is remarkable. These trees are real survivors, and it seems that the harder you cut them, the faster they grow, and any bit of twig or branch shoots and becomes another tree if left in the right conditions. The roots of willows make fine spawning substrate for a lot of fish, willows provide shade and can also strengthen river banks and slow down undesirable erosion if placed properly. They will overtake and envelop a river if not managed in any way, however.

It was my turn to check the salmon egg boxes on the upper river that the Wessex Salmon and Rivers Trust are using to investigate salmon procreation and the habitat requirements of young salmon. They are starting to swim up out of the gravel now, and are neatly captured in a little trap on the outlet of the box. These tiny salmon are counted and released daily, and only two were evident today. They were easily counted, therefore, and then taken to the release site a short distance away. The expectations are that a big increase in fry will occur any day now. It is hard to see how these tiny little slips of fish can eventually feed up, become parr, then smolts, and then make their way to the sea, avoiding a whole series of obstructions and predators on their journey up to the North Atlantic, only to return as monsters of perhaps twenty or thirty pounds in three years time.

Such enhancement work is likely to be listed as desirable action in the Water Framework Directive for the area, and having just spent some time trawling through the extensive documentation linked to the current round of consultation, I would urge all anglers to take a look too. The amount of information is staggering, but the highlights in my area, South West, are that our rivers are failing to achieve good status because of two main factors; phosphate levels, and low FISH populations. All the actions to address these failures should concentrate, therefore, on cleaning up sewage treatment work effluents, and improving FISH populations. At my recent EA meeting to discuss the WFD consultation, I mentioned that all their proposed actions seemed to help fish in theory, so could not be criticised. However, I suggested that the effects of increased numbers of fish predators could have some effect on fish populations. I suggested that research into fish predator numbers should be added to the list. I would suggest that you all do the same!

Check out the EA website, and the WFD Consultation process in your area. Look in Appendix B for current proposed actions. Should keep you busy in the Close Season.