Known to anglers as the ‘lady of the stream’, grayling is in the same family as salmon and trout and has a distinctive sail-like fin on the top of its body. Adult fish typically grow to 30 cm in length but can grow to more than 50 cm and over 1 kg in weight.
Grayling would once have been native to the River Rother but they have not been recorded in the river over the last few decades. Industrial pollution is likely to have caused the species decline in numbers and local extinction.
Improvements in water quality mean that there is now a good chance for the species to thrive if re-introduced to the river. A similar stocking programme in the River Don has led to the successful re-establishment of the grayling fishery, including through Sheffield city centre.
Fisheries Officer Jerome Masters said: “We plan to release thousands of young grayling into the River Rother each year for the next five years. When the fish grow to maturity, we expect them to be able to spawn in the river allowing us to stop artificial stocking.”
Let’s hope the new Rother stocking produces ladies like this…
Officers stocked the young fish, which are three months old, at three locations on the River Rother in Chesterfield.
The Environment Agency releases fish into our waterways annually. Fisheries officers target fish stocking activity using data from local fish surveys to identify where there are problems with poor breeding and survival.
The grayling all come from the Environment Agency’s Fish farm at Calverton, in Nottinghamshire, where between 350,000 and 500,000 fish are produced to stock rivers across the country each year. The introduction of these graylin
