News

Listen to this excellent podcast with journalist Andrew Griffiths and WTT Conservation Officer Tim Jacklin talking about ‘Letting the Dive Flow’ in the Derbyshire Peak District. 

Letting the Dove Flow is a partnership project led by the National Trust to re-naturalise the river and restore habitat in Dovedale in the Peak District National Park. Wild Trout Trust Conservation Officer Tim Jacklin is responsible for delivering the project which includes removing some of the 177 weirs installed in the 1920s.

Click here for more information about the impact of weirs.

A big thank you to Richard Fieldhouse of Barbless Flies for a donation of £500 to the Wild Trout Trust  - and to all of his customers who chose the ‘minimum packaging’ option which results in 50p per order going to the WTT.  This is a real win for the environment – less plastic, easier catch and release and funds for habitat improvement!

Barbless flies have just launched a new website to help you select the right fly in the right place at the right time. GEO-Intelligent Fly Selection is a new FREE web service:  www.which-fly.co.uk

We've all been there - you get to the water’s edge and just tie on the same fly which worked the last time you were out - hoping that the fish will still be interested. Well, how about using a little bit of modern technology to help you decide which fly to use?

The Environment Agency’s Heb Leman has just circulated an update of river restoration work with fisheries on the Test and Itchen. It’s an excellent read, including tales from an 800m restoration project at Bossington and removal of some hatches on the Test at a site impounded possibly since the 15th century, revealing some extraordinary archaeology.

Click here to read the newsletter.  

WTT attended a seminar by S&TC Cymru in Builth Wells in early April which highlighted issues around mega-dairy units in west Wales and intensive poultry rearing towards the east of the country. The impacts on Wales’ rivers and their really important trout stocks is headlined in official data on the number of pollutions reported: around 1.5 significant events per week and a Category 1 or 2 event (the most serious episodes, killing fish) about every other week.The number of sanctions imposed by Natural Resources Wales suggests that the desperately under-resourced regulator is doing little effective regulation.

The Brecon and Radnor branch of The Campaign for the Protection of Rural Wales (CPRW) has set up a petition to try to encourage a debate in the Senedd. A target of 5000 signatures is sought by 22 May; the petition is open to those non-resident in Wales but who care for its environment, including its precious rivers and their trout.

More information here http://www.brecon-and-radnor-cprw.wales/ with the petition here http://brecon-and-radnor-cprw.wales/ipu-petition

Side Stream Reflections. Further Meanderings of a Chalk Stream River Keeper by the late Ron Holloway is now available to buy on eBay. Price £9.99 plus £2.90 postage.

This is a book of the collected writings of Ron Holloway, one of the inspirational founding fathers of the Wild Trout Trust. Ron was a leading thinker and practitioner of fishing and trout management who influenced a generation of river keepers and fishery owners. This book is published posthumously by his good friend, David Hamnett. Profits from the sale of the book (approx. £5 per book) are donated to the Wild Trout Trust.

David says: 

WWF, the Angling Trust and the Rivers Trust have launched a new report called ‘Saving the Earth’ which highlights the damage being done to soil by farming. We are losing soil from the land at ten times the rate it is being replaced and too much soil is ending up in our rivers, causing huge damage to wildlife.  The report highlights the need to focus both payments to farmers and enforcement efforts on preserving our soils to ensure future food production and healthy rivers.

Tony Juniper said:

'Healthy soil is vital for our national security, yet we continue to cause immense damage to it, not only threatening our long term food supply but also harming our rivers and wildlife. None of this is inevitable though. We could have a farming system that restores soils and wildlife, while at the same time stopping agricultural run-off polluting our rivers. To do this we need not only the right legislation, however, but also robust enforcement and proper advice for farmers, otherwise new policies simply won’t work. The good news is that this will cost only about 10 million pounds a year.'

While our beloved trout are winter spawners with a long in-gravel incubation period that releases babies into the river when things start to warm up and hopefully become easier for little uns, most other river fish species egg-lay in the spring, with much shorter incubation times.

Right now, early April, grayling are spawning in my local river (the Itchen) and bullheads have very recently done so too. This video, courtesy of WTT member Martin Smith, shows brook lampreys doing their communal spawning thing, on the Thornton Beck in N Yorks. The adult lampreys use their weak, sucker mouths to move stones, creating a shallow depression into which their eggs can be laid. The resulting blind juveniles, called in the lamprey species ammocoetes, live for perhaps several years in silt beds in the river, filter-feeding on organic material.

They change into adults in the autumn, developing eyes, a silvery coloration and distinct fins, before spawning, then dying, the following spring. These animals, not technically true fish, are incredibly interesting and very well worth reading more about. Find on the internet the brilliant paper by Peter Maitland for Natural England: Ecology of the River, Brook and Sea Lamprey.  

WTT responded robustly to the Environment Agency’s consultation on proposed charges for permits issued under the Environmental Permitting Regulations. These are the permits we usually have to get to do habitat improvement work in the river. We felt it iniquitous that EA should be seeking to charge perhaps many hundreds of pounds for such work by NGOs, angling clubs and many others aimed at improving our environment (and supporting the EA’s statutory obligations to do so).

Now the EA has responded to that consultation and issued its charges: there’s good and bad news. The good news is that the Agency has listened to the howls from across the conservation and angling worlds and maybe made things better: there is now a reduced rate for a permit for “non-commercial activities undertaken for the purpose of environmental improvement”. Furthermore, during the 18/19 year, EA is to look again at the exemptions from permitting which might allow the likes of WTT to do our good work without a formal permit and associated cost. EA is keen to progress catchment permits, whereby an operator could apply to carry out the same work at multiple sites within a catchment, reducing the overall permit bill.

However, the charges still remain, in our opinion, steep. A permit for a single “non-commercial activity undertaken for the purpose of environmental improvement” (say a number of log deflectors in the river) will cost £170 and then every additional “activity” (say, marginal brash habitat features) will cost 25% of that £170, so another £42.50. Then there may be an additional subsistence charge of £68. So, a fairly simple project with four different habitat improvement methods (“activities” in EA language) could cost £365.50 in permit charges alone, excluding the cost of preparing the permit application and before any actual work starts.

The Haddon Estate, through its Peacock Fly Fishing Club, has kindly offered its fisheries on 14 & 15 July this year, as a fundraising weekend for WTT. This is an excellent opportunity to fish for wild browns, wild rainbows and grayling across four rivers including areas usually only open to the Peacock Fly Fishing Club members.

The Estate ceased stocking on the Wye, Lathkill and Bradford in 2004 and since then, has operated a thriving, catch & release wild fishery with strictly bankside, dry-fly only fishing. Nymph fishing and wading are permitted on the River Derwent section. If required, advice will be available from local guides to help you get the best out of your day. To find out more about the Peacock Fly Fishing Club, how the Estate’s fisheries are managed and what they offer, you are invited to join the river keepers for a BBQ at lunchtime (at no extra cost).

A limited number of rods are available at £50 per rod per day so do book soon.