BRFC new protocol for fish weights ?!?

[Philip]

Whats all this business about the BRFC implementing a new protocol for verifying fish weights that now rounds down to the nearest whole scale divison ?

So for example Ray Clarkes Roach that was 4lb 3oz for like a zillon years would now be accepted at 4lb 2oz.

While I am well on board with the whole rounding down concept, what about if scales weigh in 8 dram divisons ? ...you could have a small fish like a Dace that weighs say 1lb.5oz 9drams....the BRFC would see it as 1lb 5oz not 1lb 5 and a half ounces.

Have I understood it correctly ? ...Seems a little unfair to me for the smaller species....

 

[John Aston]

Meh I is my reaction I guess. There was a time when I knew every record off by heart , from Joyce Yallop's mako to Revd EC Alston's rudd . But somewhere along the way, I think during a period when huge carp, barbel and bream were being caught weekly , I lost track.

I also came to realise that many , if not the majority of freshwater records came from a small number of waters , usually 150 miles or so south . I have to resist the urge to scream when some Angling Times expert blithely refers to a few 'small' bream of 'only' 9 or 10 lbs and not even weighing 'low six 'chub .

 

[@Clive]

I caught a bleak the other day and weighed it on the village weighbridge. It only measures in 10kg increments so where and how do I claim my 10kg bleak world rod-caught record?

 

[Alan Whitty]

Wouldn't claim a record, so protocol doesnt enter into it and my scales telling me the weight would be the way forward and nuts to the BRFC....

 

[steve2]

Does anyone know what the records are now, I don't. Do they really matter anymore with amount of bait being fed many are nolonger what I would call natural weights. Just obese fish.

 

[John Aston]

Bit of a sweeping generalisation. I think it's more complex than food - otherwise we'd have ten pound gudgeon and three pound bleak.To take a couple of examples the huge perch being caught in Grafham , the giant zander in the Severn and the monster grayling in the Frome and the border rivers aren't big because someone is feeding them ...

 

[Mark Wintle]

Bit of a sweeping generalisation. I think it's more complex than food - otherwise we'd have ten pound gudgeon and three pound bleak.To take a couple of examples the huge perch being caught in Grafham , the giant zander in the Severn and the monster grayling in the Frome and the border rivers aren't big because someone is feeding them ...

I grew up in Wareham which is between the two rivers, the Piddle and the Frome, and have fished both for over 50 years.

The biggest changes on the Frome have been a massive deline in the amount of cyprinids (dace and roach) on the non-tidal river, especially the last 30 odd years, and the opening up of what were strictly game fishing reaches above Wool for restricted coarse fishing in winter.

In the 1970s a 2lb grayling on the stretch just above Wareham was a fish of a lifetime with about 1-8-0 being the usual maximum due to the competition from dace. Then in the late 80s it became known that there were much bigger grayling in the Frome at places such as West Stafford after few were stocked into a former trout water at Loudsmill near Dorchester with a new record coming from there of 3-12. Although Loudsmill failed to sustain the grayling for very long some anglers succedded in gaining access to these private stretches, and since then Christchurch AC members have access to a couple of stretches near Tincleton, hence several record fish over 4lbs, and the better feeding nearer Wareham resulting in the occasional 3lber from the lower reaches. My best is 2-10 and I've had a few more 2lbers, all from only just above the tidal limit.

 

[nottskev]

I grew up in Wareham which is between the two rivers, the Piddle and the Frome, and have fished both for over 50 years.

The biggest changes on the Frome have been a massive deline in the amount of cyprinids (dace and roach) on the non-tidal river, especially the last 30 odd years, and the opening up of what were strictly game fishing reaches above Wool for restricted coarse fishing in winter.

In the 1970s a 2lb grayling on the stretch just above Wareham was a fish of a lifetime with about 1-8-0 being the usual maximum due to the competition from dace. Then in the late 80s it became known that there were much bigger grayling in the Frome at places such as West Stafford after few were stocked into a former trout water at Loudsmill near Dorchester with a new record coming from there of 3-12. Although Loudsmill failed to sustain the grayling for very long some anglers succedded in gaining access to these private stretches, and since then Christchurch AC members have access to a couple of stretches near Tincleton, hence several record fish over 4lbs, and the better feeding nearer Wareham resulting in the occasional 3lber from the lower reaches. My best is 2-10 and I've had a few more 2lbers, all from only just above the tidal limit.

I see the point about grayling growing bigger when competition reduces when coarse species decline. But I'm curious why graying might thrive where coarse fish don't - received wisdom is usually that game fish require higher water quality and coarse fish can tolerate worse. You might expect, given the normal direction of our rivers, ie getting worse, that a river would lose grayling before dace and roach ...... My background reason for asking is that two of the Trent tribs I used to fish, Dove and Derwent, lost their coarse fish dramatically quickly but retained plenty of trout and grayling, and one, the Derwent, suddenly became full of small grayling when you could barely catch any coarse species. What would drive that type of substitution?

 

[John Aston]

Grayling are coarse fish of course ,and in my experience are fairly demanding of their habitat requirements . They aren''t found as far upstream as brown trout , who will happily live in the upper parts of tiny streams. They seem to do best in clean , well oxygenated with good fly life - they thrive best where there are good stocks of shrimp and caddis once the river starts to get some deeper(18"plus)pools and some slower glides . I think they don't like heavily shadowed water , from my own observations . They do rise to fly , but their preferred eating is grubbing around for nymphs on the bottom, facilitated by their underslung mouths.

Received wisdom is that they are very intolerant of pollution and thus have canary in the coalmine status. On one of my local rovers my EA contact has commented that the 'game zone' of the river is actually moving downstream .In the eyes of the public every river is an open sewer of course but some have certainly improved over my lifetime. Grayling are short lived (4years is typical I think ) and fast growing and I suspect can exploit an ecological niche faster than more slow growing species.

Habitat is all when it comes to size. I had caught hundreds from the Swale and Ure before I caught a two pounder from the Rye. I've now had over fifty twos from the Rye . with two at 2-13 . Same angler, same methods but better habitat - more limestone (thus higher pH ) , fewer floods and much better fly life.

 

[Mark Wintle]

One of the main reasons that the dace and roach declined badly on the Frome (and Piddle) was that post 1981 it was no longer possible to shoot the cormorants the way it was done before (there was a 50p beak bounty) and the numbers in Poole Harbour climbed from 5 to 7 to several hundred and they've been taking their toll on local rivers and stillwaters ever since. The grayling seem more able to avoid predation though far from entirely. There also seem to be far more small brown trout in the river nowadays.

There is a stupendous amount of the right sort of grayling food in the Frome below Dorchester. I caught a pound grayling about 20 years ago that didn't survive swallowing the hook (caught floatfishing) so took it home and ate it but did check its gut contents which was a few maggots plus several hundred tiny dark green caddis grubs (not entirely sure what they were).

The Frome doesn't seem polluted though carries more colour than previously below Wool, possibly due to more runoff from the Bovington tank ranges - the silt is supposed to be trapped before it can get in the river.

 

[nottskev]

Thanks for the information, John. Do you have any thoughts on why these canaries might thrive in rivers previously noted for great stocks of other less fastidious coarse fish? That's what puzzles me about the rivers I mentioned, since we might expect that roach, dace, chub etc stocks would be increased by habitat improvement, if that's what allows grayling to extend their reach or even take over? I don't think every river is an open sewer, but I'm aware some are in danger of becoming so, or repositories of different kinds of farming run-off, and, moving the subject aside from this, I've seen some peculiar reversals of fish stocks in recent decades ie the two I mentioned. Don't all fish do better in better environments or are there twists that can occur? The EA were unable to say anything that shed light on why the Derwent's grayling were thriving while its coarse fish were vanishing. Funnily enough, all the best grayling stretches I've known, and I'm only a grayling dabbler, on that river are in the most heavily wooded sections.

 

[@Clive]

On some rivers scientists discovered that traces of hnv pellets were evident in all species and some insect life. That suggests all species are receiving more hnv directly or indirectly than in the pre-pellet days.

Then there is the issue of signal crayfish. A study carried out on a large remote Spanish reservoir concluded that crayfish formed the majority food source in adult carp. Young crayfish and their eggs could be predated on by many species.

On my local Sth. Yorkshire river, no more than 35 miles long, decades of chemical pollution in the lower 25 or so miles resulted in no fish species surviving. Yet within 10 years of the collieries closing trout, grayling, chub and barbel were found in the previously polluted length. They had been present in the head waters and gradually populated the downstream length that had been toxic previously. Around the 1980's a WMC rented a two mile stretch of the middle river and stocked it with 20 or 30 barbel. By 2004 some had reached 12lb and they topped out at 16lb+. But their progeny have not reached the same weights. So either the initial stock were exceptional or they got a head start with little competition, but plenty of crayfish.

 

[John Aston]

Thanks for the information, John. Do you have any thoughts on why these canaries might thrive in rivers previously noted for great stocks of other less fastidious coarse fish? That's what puzzles me about the rivers I mentioned, since we might expect that roach, dace, chub etc stocks would be increased by habitat improvement, if that's what allows grayling to extend their reach or even take over? I don't think every river is an open sewer, but I'm aware some are in danger of becoming so, or repositories of different kinds of farming run-off, and, moving the subject aside from this, I've seen some peculiar reversals of fish stocks in recent decades ie the two I mentioned. Don't all fish do better in better environments or are there twists that can occur? The EA were unable to say anything that shed light on why the Derwent's grayling were thriving while its coarse fish were vanishing. Funnily enough, all the best grayling stretches I've known, and I'm only a grayling dabbler, on that river are in the most heavily wooded sections.

Only guesswork . Grayling grow fast and die young . Their preferred habitat spans the mid and lower game zone and the upper coarse zone. I'll often see them cheek by jowl with chub and dace , but not commonly roach or perch . I don't know enough about what most cyprinids eat - we know chub are opportunists and will eat anything but as for roach , dace and bream, well of course they eat nymphs (caddis , olive etc ) but I suspect (but don't know ) that bloodworm is a much bigger part of their diet - and for them you need a muddy, silty bottom . And vegetable matter -which grows well in slower water and thrives where the water is rich enough in nutrients to support it. We have all heard that a river can be too clean for coarse fish ..

 

[@Clive]

There was an article on tv the other day about a bloke who has been photographing a northern river for many years. His underwater footage showed grayling grubbing through gravel to locate nymphs and caddis much like young barbel do.

It also demonstrated the difference in the river bed over the years. Today there is more silt and slime on the gravel.

In the trout / grayling zone of the Dearne I used to catch roach while fly fishing, but not dace or chub. They were found a little way further downstream although they must have been present in the upper reaches in order to have re-populated the lower river after the pollution ended..

 

[nottskev]

We have all heard that a river can be too clean for coarse fish ..

Yes, I've heard that said, and that's what I'd like to hear unpacked, as it contradicts those who claim there can be no such thing as a beneficial degree of pollution - I've heard the idea treated with scorn and derision - and aligns with those who say that some species do better on a limited admixture of eg sewage, a puzzling idea on the face of it. The collapse of Lower Derwent coarse fish stocks coincided with a major upgrade of Derby sewage works, but nobody says anything clear on how or whether those two things might be related. On another track, I did read lately that, related to their relatively small volume of flow, Peak District rivers topped tables for levels of medical waste such as anti-depressants and contraceptive meds. Funnily enough, I've had a few trips to scenic Derbyshire this year but caught the biggest grayling a stones throw from Nottingham centre. I hope they don't come to the top and look around as the fright would probably do for them.