Fishing Under Threat

Fishing Under Threat

Fishing is under threat from plans to expand Abberton Reservoir to bolster water supplies and improve duck habitats.

Essex and Suffolk Water (ESW), which owns the lake, wants to increase depths by 9m, which would increase its bank area from four miles to six.

The firm says it would help safeguard water supplies to the drought-threatened South-East, where hundreds of thousands of new homes are set to be built over the next decade.

But the move would also flood the causeway which for years has been the only area of the reservoir where angling is permitted, meaning the road will need to be raised.

Pike angler Bill Palmer, who has fished Abberton for 40 years, was invited to a meeting to discuss ESW’s plans for the water last month. When he asked where anglers would be able to fish once the work was completed, officials told him: “You won’t. We’re stopping it.”

Bill said: “The meeting started at 5.30 and I was on my way home at 6, after storming out spitting blood. the meeting was being held by two Essex & Suffolk managers and a Miranda Davis, environment manager.

“When they started to show the plans of the raised road going over the reservoir (the only bit of the reservoir we can fish), I asked if we would still be able to fish from the road when the work was finished. I was told no, so I asked what part of the reservoir we would be allowed to fish. They then told me there would be no more fishing in the main reservoir.

“It’s very sad. I don’t know if the younger generation of pikers are ever going to get the chance to fish on there.”

ESW also plans to improve the reservoir as a habitat for migrating wildfowl.

While anglers aren’t allowed to fish vast areas of the water, bird watchers enjoy almost free access to large tracts of its banks.

‘Abbo’ became legendary as a big fish water in the 1980s. It was the venue where Lea Valley legend Eddie Turner and his mates developed the drifter float.

The method brought a string of big fish and today the reservoir, the vast amount of which cannot be fished, still throws up the occasional high 20.

ESW is also applying to increase the amount of water it extracts from the Ely Ouse. Water is pumped to Essex via the Cut-Off Channel and a pipeline which runs from Blackdyke Pumping Station.

There are fears the move could further reduce river flows in both the tidal and non-tidal river, which could in turn increase siltation.

Siltation around the sluices at Denver has meant water is run off the freshwater river into the Relief Channel between tides.

Last month an EA scientist told King’s Lynn Angling Association’s AGM that savage winter run-offs had decimated fish stocks, with whole year classes of silver fish being literally sucked out to sea through the tail sluice at St German’s.