OUR JEWEL IN THE CROWN

                 

the future's bright - the future's gold

If you’re a lover of wildlife, you’ll know there are places that you visit which touch your soul. I’ve recently returned from just such a place. 
                            
This place isn't grand, it's just a shallow half-acre lake surrounded by woodland and fields with a little river running through it. Neither is it ancient, for until recently it was a silted up hole in the ground which required three years of hard graft by members and volunteers to transform into a haven for wildlife. It's become very valuable.

carving the lake from the overgrown countryside with the owners blessing

 

thousands of tons of silt were removed

drastic measures but what a transformation

nature's powers of recovery are remarkable and when clean water is provided, extremely rapid

just a few of the large numbers of tench and crucians stocked into our lake

Why it has a magical quality is a mystery but lying in a hollow in a quiet corner of sunny Dorset, it is the very essence of peace and tranquillity, apart that is from the deafening birdsong. In just two visits I’ve already identified thirty-seven different species, so all of them think it’s a special place too.

With a steady flow of crystal clear water, weed growth is prolific, so the lake makes an ideal home for tench and crucians. The club has stocked lots of both this past couple of years and they are growing rapidly. They have even bred successfully. The water is alive with food and fat fish.

what a cute little tench, hardly out of nappies

all the tench are in superb condition and fiesty when hooked

1st May was the day our members were allowed to fish it for the first time so a couple of days later I arrived at sunrise to see whether our club had created the ideal fishery for some traditional angling.

The mist rose gently from the calm water as I carefully cleared a narrow strip in the weed, using a small rake on the end of my landing net pole very close to the bank.

 

Tench love weed and the food and cover it provides, so I was careful to only scrape out enough to provide a clearing for my tiny pole float and create a spot for my bait to rest on the silt.

Quietly lowering a small pole cup of chopped worms in dark groundbait along with a pinch of hempseed, pellets and maggots into the swim, I inched my little bit of worm over the top before enjoying the damp air rising above the willows and alders.

Those moments when waiting for the first signs of interest from the fish are as good as they get, though I didn’t have to wait long before the float tip trembled before being pulled slowly under. A gentle strike, a wriggling resistance and the fattest little tench lay in the landing net and made my day.

my very first tench from our new pool, tempted by a bit of worm

Luckily it was the first of many, so another little pot of tempting morsels was added to the swim after every couple of tench and didn’t they fight, stretching my elastic to the point where I thought I’d be broken. They were the most perfect fish, golden red-eyed beauties, the females so fat that spawning was surely imminent.

they are the most perfect example of tench

It was a little cool and early for the crucians to add to my enjoyment but they will surely be delighting us all before too many weeks have passed and I was more than happy with the eleven tench caught in the four hours I was able to escape the world. 

butter melting in the early morning sunshine

Chris casting into the future

They weren’t all small either, several being around the three pound mark or more and really feisty too. Neither did I  catch as many as several other members, so for our Wimborne Club, it has been mission accomplished.

a happy angler with a good 'un

Three years ago the WDAC set out to create a traditional tench and crucian fishery for our members and with the help of many volunteers and organisations like the EA and Angling Trust, the results are simply delightful. I’d strongly recommend you give it a try ; it really is a jewel in our crown.

Chris catching the future

For further info on WDAC membership and our other waters, please visit our website :   http://www.wimborneanddistrictanglingclub.co.uk/

BEGINNER'S LUCK?

                         

Charlie with a cracking roach

Charlie showing us older anglers how to do it

It’s easy to dismiss a child’s success in angling as beginner’s luck but I believe there is something more fundamental going on here that we more ‘mature’ anglers should take note of.

Bernard Venables' Crabtree' lean'

  

pike imagery at it's best

pure Crabtree as Ben fights a monster

It is wonderful when our young anglers catch good fish and when friend Jim sent me pics of his two boys, Charlie and Ben before the end of the river season, I felt it was an opportunity to explore the reasons why they were successful when we were struggling.

a cracking fat thirteen pounder from a small carrier for Ben

Jim happily blanking for roach

Jim works for the Environment Agency and along with several other friends I have working there, does everything possible for our rivers and fish life that tight government budgets allow. I know it is fashionable to knock the EA, as it is the NHS, but in the case of the work carried out from the Blandford HQ, criticism is inappropriate and unfair. If our government actually cared about our environment and did something instead of just talking about it then we would all be better off and so would our fish and other freshwater wildlife. Anyway, rant over.

a beautiful big brownie for Jim

Charlie and Ben have the first requirement to be successful and that is a knowledgeable Dad who is keen to take them out and help them catch. But more than that, both boys have enquiring minds and are prepared to try smaller bits of water in the Hampshire Avon water meadows that we ‘grown ups’ might overlook or dismiss.

Charlie trotting successfully for grayling

Secondly, have you noticed how you are often successful when first visiting a water but never quite as successful after that? It’s a tricky one as knowledge is meant to be helpful … and it’s essential when making wildlife films … but I for one suffer from a lack of open mindedness once I’ve visited a water and don’t think it through as thoroughly ever again. Your mind is already cluttered by past experience and so you are less likely to make a decision based on the conditions facing you at the time. You naturally tend to head for a swim where you have caught before when you should be at the other end of the lake or different stretch of river.

using a pin - good boy!

No such problem if you’re a beginner, you just do what comes naturally and catch! You are more inclined to explore and try different things and different places, so the lesson for me at least - “must try harder”!

the cue's for the show stretched into the street

… and now for something completely different. I’m certainly a beginner when it comes to giving talks and film shows, so Friday night saw me well out of my comfort zone. As those who’ve read this blog before, I decided to attempt a fund- raiser to help support the Dorset Wildlife Trust and their sterling work to restore our local gem of a chalk stream, the River Allen.

struggling with the lapel mic - it didn't work

if it can go wrong - talking about pumas instead of showing pumas

I booked the largest hall in Wimborne, a big projector, large speakers and twelve foot screen, then wondered if anyone would show up! In the event, thanks to tireless work by DWT staff, we filled the place and 310 folk contributed £2,000+ to the project funds. The auctioned pic. of Penny the Puma raised an impressive £230 and might have done even better if the DVD hadn’t failed to play after twenty minutes!

 heavy gear - no wonder I needed hip replacements

The audience had to put up with me rabbiting on about my lovely pussy cat instead but they didn’t seem to mind, especially as I was asked if I was ever near to getting eaten by her.

the lady winner of the portrait of Penny the Puma with DWT staff

I survived to tell the story … and survived the even greater ordeal of being in front of an audience, so I guess, if invited, I might even do it again, especially if the river will benefit from the effort everyone put in.

Our BAFTA award winning tiger film next - maybe?

two of our three cute cubs

ACTION ON CORMORANTS - PROTECT OUR FISH

                   

Maybe beautiful if painted by one of wildlife's leading artists.

Nearly 2lbs from the Avon and still alive.

It takes ten years for a prime roach like this to grow to 2lbs. It takes a cormorant two minutes to consume it. Roach are in big trouble because they are running out of time.

PREDATION is a provocative word these days, even if it is a fundamental part of any healthy ecosystem. Perhaps our sometimes hostile attitude stems back to ancient times when predators used to eat us!

The eyes might have it but it's the nose that finds the prey.

I’ve filmed more than enough predators that could have eaten me if I hadn’t been paying attention but I loved them because they create dramatic stories for TV audiences.

A male tiger - big enough!

Tigers still consider humans legitimate prey, though this large male was not killed for eating one of us. A competing male had moved into the territory where we were filming, killed this tiger then ‘our’ female, who died trying to defend her cubs from him. He eventually killed a local who was gathering wood in the forest.

Makes the heart miss a beat c. Stanley Breeden

.

A mountain lion or puma - one eat a fisherman just after I'd finished filming c. Laurie Campbell

Apart from tigers, mountain lions kill one or two of us most years, grizzly bears likewise. There are always polar bears that threaten adventurous travellers, crocs can be deadly and if we are to believe some TV programmes, even fish have a nibble once in a while. But these are the freak show exceptions. 

Even a dentist might flinch at this mouthful c. Carl Englander

The truth is that it’s a dog eat dog world out in the wild and there is always something eating something else. We all know that pike eat perch and perch eat roach and roach eat little critters and some of us were hostile when fish eating zander where introduced to the UK, even leading to culling ... and in the bad old days we were  even encouraged to kill pike, so in spite of our possible hostility, predators are a natural part of our everyday life by the water.

A gripping story c. Jonathan Scott

At risk of stating the bleeding obvious, predators need prey and prey need predators, otherwise there wouldn’t be enough food to go round. In most healthy ecosystems, it’s the prey that control the predators … for without prey, the predators would starve and die. 


One classic and familiar relationship is the lions and wildebeast in the Serengeti. 

Leap of faith c. Jonathan Scott

Without the lions and crocs reducing their numbers, the herds would soon run out of grass and conversely, if the wildebeast fail to complete their migration to Kenya, the lions die.

Quenching your thirst comes at a price c. Deeble and Stone

Tempers flare when food is scarce c. Jonathan Scott

Problems arise when the balance between predator and prey is lost and that is exactly what is now happening in our rivers and lakes. Predators have eaten so many fish that some species like roach are in serious decline and this becomes even more critical when the prey species are so low on wildlife enthusiasts radar that they don’t even notice. 

Avon roach at Britford.

Fish are the great ‘unseen’ in our countryside - literally out of sight, out of mind. It’s only anglers who are aware of them and care about them and so it’s up to us to do something when the predator/prey relationship goes wrong.

They sometimes look quite cute?!

Ringing recoveries show where the cormorants are coming from.

Most anglers are now aware of just how much damage the winter invasion of between 20 to 30,000 cormorants from the continent do to our fish life and if scientists are correct when they say that each cormorant requires about a pound of fish each day to just survive, [not to raise young], then that means that throughout the winter, 20,000lbs of fish are removed from our waters every day.  

That deadly hooked beak.

So in four months, cormorants eat more fish than the largest fish farm in Europe produces in a year! This is surely unsustainable and must be damaging our biodiversity and this is exactly what has happened.

As the British Trust for Ornithology graph shows, cormorant inland breeding numbers have also increased from nil in 1980 to 2096 pairs in 2005, so there is no escape from the plunder, even in summer.

All of the above are the ones that survived the attacks.

The Hampshire Avon was once famous for it’s thriving roach populations but two recent Environment Agency Surveys shows just how dramatic the decline has been since the increase in cormorant predation. 

Missing millions from the Hampshire Avon.

The graph indicates roach presence in yellow and highlights the almost complete absence of them from the middle reaches of the river, historically their stronghold. Not content to see the river die, a group of us passionate roach anglers, led by Trevor Harrop and Budgie Price of the Avon Roach Project wrote a petition ‘Biodiversity in Danger’, raised 16,000 signatures and with the Angling Trust now supporting us, delivered the petiton to the Minister, Richard Benyon.

As a result of this and pressure from the Angling Trust, a  government review into the cormorant problem has been carried out by DEFRA. We are hoping the minister will place the cormorant on the general license, thus enabling river keepers to protect their fisheries more easily when and if necessary. We are expecting a decision in the next few weeks.

Decline of roach catches on the Dorset Stour.

Some of the evidence of declines put forward to the review group is alarming. For instance, I compiled this summary of the dramatic fall off in catches at the once famous roach fishery on the Dorset Stour at Wimborne, based on ten years of match results.

Cormorant increases in Germany.

Recent scientific reports from Europe show the extremely rapid increase in cormorants there … and they will be heading our way sometime soon. Cormorants are a big problem in Europe but it’s not clear why they have reached these epidemic proportions.

If you add all the other threats to our rivers … abstraction, pollution, siltation, American signal crayfish eating the fish eggs, hydro schemes, loss of habitat and not least climate chaos leading to dramatic floods or drought, then fish life has never had it so bad … and don’t blame the Environment Agency. They are doing everything they can to help our fish populations and have achieved impressive results in our neck of the woods. Alas, recent cuts in funding is limiting their ambition.

Everything in nature is complex and I bet it isn't only the cormorants that are to blame for the declines. Apart from those problems listed above, there are chemicals from trout farms and cress beds and even more important I believe, the loss of the refuge and nursery areas provided by the derelict water meadow carrier systems. Then if you add us humans to the equation the solutions become almost impossible. Suggestions by the RSPB that we should leave tree cover or build fish refuges in rivers are sensible if such structures weren’t removed by Natural England to provide better habitat for wading birds or by the EA to alleviate the risk of flooding. We humans have done so much to destroy our wildlife that it is no longer an option to do nothing.

Article in recent issue of BBC Wildlife.

I recently contributed to an article in BBC Wildlife ‘Licence to Cull?’ about perceived ‘troublesome’ species like mink, wild boar, deer, ruddy duck, badgers, grey squirrels, corvids, even hedghogs and yes, cormorants.

Predator eats predator - perch for breakfast c. Steve Allen

During his research, James Fair, a very experienced senior editor wrote that ‘in any discussion of culling, it’s noticeable that birds tend to have more friends than mammals’. So were does that leave our fish – with no friends at all? Us anglers need to tell the world what is happening out there, to work with the Wildlife Trusts and the RSPB, to get them to listen to our cries of help. If most of the wildlife protection organisations weren't so ignorant about fish,  admitted that there is a problem and stopped being in denial then our task of finding solutions might just be possible.

Another perch bites the dust c. Brian Bevan

I suspect there is a hint of 'anti-angling' in some organisations and if so, then it's up to us to tell them all the good work we do for our rivers and lakes. Through our rod licences and voluntary help we put at least twenty five million pounds back into the environment and all wildlife benefits from our care and attention. Without us there will be even fewer fish and as a result, fish eating birds and mammals will suffer. 

More than a mouthful of pike for this great-crested grebe.

So rise to the challenge and involve yourself with your local wildlife trust like I have. It doesn't take long to tell them about how important fish life is to their treasured freshwater ecosystems and what us anglers are doing to help. We all need to work together on behalf of our wildlife and that includes fish.

Big bill.

What every one of us can do is join the Angling Trust and the Salmon and Trout Association so at least our combined voices can be heard in the corridors of power. It helped us to progress with the cormorant problem so lets hope the Minister comes up with a solution that allows our fish stocks to start making a recovery. We are up against a million RSPB members but there are more of us than them, so just join us and get your voice heard. Membership costs very little but the results can be impressive : http://www.anglingtrust.net/

Nearly a Test two for Martin.  

Below is a film I made with the Avon Roach Project and Martin Salter for the Angling Trust, ‘Action on Cormorants - Protect Our Fish' :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BjkOPvmzmQ&list=UU6PLLOmayfIppI-X-c73bMg&index=1