Cormorants on the rivers

[@Clive]

Yep Clive climate fluctuating has to be a factor

Hopefully no polar bears anytime soon

We have wolves locally. I found a paw print and some fur trapped on a wire fence last year. One was found dead not too far away three or four years ago.

 

[nottskev]

My guess would be that cormorants can have a devastating but localised effect until they move on , also after they have moved on they may leave behind a fish population that takes years to recover

That's exactly how it is in some areas. And you could add in the further costs: clubs losing members, falling out with themselves over whether and how a water might be revived and protected, endless, often futile, efforts to deter, waters disfigured with Heath Robinson pole and cable affairs, sorry scarecrows, old CD's hanging on strings, fish refuges of dubious value (there was a phase on my local river when the only way to get a bite from a roach or dace in clear water conditions was to fish under one of the ugliest bridges you'll find anywhere) and more.

When anglers are said to be their own worst enemy - apathetic, disorganised - I'd partly agree. And I wish we'd collectively invest more of our money in organisations to represent our interests. Being tackle-rich and fish-poor is not a good prospect. But I'd want it remembered that a powerful sense of "you might as well not bother" is fed by the recognition that so much of the "machinery" of our country is opaque, closed to popular participation and run by and for interests different from and at times inimical to not only to coarse fishing but to environmental matters in general.

 

[bennygesserit]

Invasive species are interesting , and the notion that nature always finds balance , it does , but on the journey to that balance many species flicker out of existence usurped by some species or other.

There is a species of walnut tree (I believe) interwoven in a symbiotic life cycle with a very specialist bird and and insect all 3 found , only, in a few acres on some isolated island.

Now with globalisation , which kicked in during the Victorian era and before we started upsetting the balance at a pace far faster than evolution , Japanese knotweed for example an invasive species carried here for display in Victorian Gardens , see this many times on Gardner's world and it always makes me cringe - we imported this flower from South America and none of our bees can pollinate it !

So why arent there hundreds of lions and no zebras ? Mainly I think because Lions are territorial and if they weren't there wouldn't be any zebras , until there were no more lions , then the place would be wall to wall zebras.

I amongst all this are mini take overs , displacements , invasions some of them taking just a few decades some a few hundred years

 

[@Clive]

I used to subscribe to the theory that nature restores the balance. However in the Grand Banks so many big cod were caught that the population of their prey species grew so large that it now decimates the young cod population. Also some introduced species can dominate the food supply and effectively starve the native populations. Carp are a good example of this. Add disease as seen in the red & grey squirrel situation and that creates imbalance too.

 

[@Clive]

That's exactly how it is in some areas. And you could add in the further costs: clubs losing members, falling out with themselves over whether and how a water might be revived and protected, endless, often futile, efforts to deter, waters disfigured with Heath Robinson pole and cable affairs, sorry scarecrows, old CD's hanging on strings, fish refuges of dubious value (there was a phase on my local river when the only way to get a bite from a roach or dace in clear water conditions was to fish under one of the ugliest bridges you'll find anywhere) and more.

When anglers are said to be their own worst enemy - apathetic, disorganised - I'd partly agree. And I wish we'd collectively invest more of our money in organisations to represent our interests. Being tackle-rich and fish-poor is not a good prospect. But I'd want it remembered that a powerful sense of "you might as well not bother" is fed by the recognition that so much of the "machinery" of our country is opaque, closed to popular participation and run by and for interests different from and at times inimical to not only to coarse fishing but to environmental matters in general.

I have been thinking about this recently. The RSPB have clout largely through numbers, but also because they are perceived to be acting for the common good without any hint of selfishness. Nothing could be further from the truth, but they have household names promoting them. BASC have the clout of rich and influential landowners behind them and like the RSPB have devised membership schemes that are beneficial to the members. Many shooters join BASC simply for the insurance policy. Likewise RSPB numbers are swelled by those looking to cut the cost of their visits to bird reserves. Angling hasn't got that sort of soft support. The demise of the large Associations leaves smaller pockets of anglers bound by club membership. The Angling Trust appear to have always been self serving and the Salmon & Trout Association ask for the support of coarse anglers in their campaign, but are reluctant to return the favour.

Anglers also demand wholesale changes to the river systems that would cost a great deal of money to put right. This is strongly resisted by private companies and government agencies and largely ignored by thd general public.

It is hard to see how the situation can be made better.

 

[John Aston]

The AT has a difficult role. It has to be all things to all anglers, and thus risks carp guys saying it is too match focussed, fly fishermen saying it's too coarse focussed and so on ad nauseam . It even gets criticised for being the beneficiary of grant funding - but that is how stuff works. Big NGOs from RSPB to C&RT are partly reliant on grants and even at my humble level I'm involved in projects where we've secured funding from local and central government and I don't feel in any way fettered or concerned by that.

Cards on table - I've been a member of AT since it was created and I also have done voluntary work for them - chairing forums, the odd talk etc. Without exception I have found their people smart , helpful and professional. Unlike the EA they have been of great support in a fight I'm in with C &RT (about whom I do not have even one good word to say ) . The AT got us back angling in Covid and have introduced widespread water quality testing, for which I am one of hundreds of volunteers.

I am no apologist for the Trust but so far as I am concerned it is the only show in town. We desperately need to speak with one voice and there is no other body which can do so. I am sick and tired of the Des Taylors, Martin Bowlers and Steve Popes of this world moaning about the Trust , in one case about its failure (!) to get otter culls legalised and similar cloud cuckoo land nonsense - while offering no suggestions of their own about how our voice can be heard . With friends like them .....

As I say, the AT is the only show in town and we risk being crucified by our apathy . Even the ACA - about whom nobody had a bad word to say - had fewer than 20,000 members, at a time when 2 million licences were sold . Meaning 1 % - one per cent - of anglers gave enough of a f*** about their sport to support an organisation to protect their interests. And that was , and is pathetic.

 

[@Clive]

But the ACA was supported by amalgamations and clubs as well as individual anglers. They held block voting rights and had in some cases thousands of anglers under their membership.

Regards the AT; In the early days I looked into what they had done and how they spent their funding. It will be somewhere in the archives of this forum. It didn't inspire me. Then there were the later controversies concerning those who ran the Trust. I am sure that the grass roots members and lower level management do not represent those at the top table. In Trusts and Charities there appears to be dual standards where the self servers drawing salaries are reliant on people like John to do the work for nothing.

 

[John Aston]

The AT has individual as well as club and association members. The AT had an awful start with bad choices of senior officer. That was a long time ago and I find it well run, responsive and helpful . The people I know aren't earning big salaries but doing work they love .

But we can all find reasons not to get involved but the sad fact is that even if the Trust were all things to all anglers, 99% would either be too apathetic or cynical to join or find spurious reasons not to . And yet we will still wonder why get screwed over by legislation and authorities...

 

[nottskev]

I think a few of us are over 65; my senior AT membership cost me the equivalent of three pints of casters and three bags of groundbait. I should be so fastidious about angling's national representative body that I baulk at that? Apathy, reluctance to participate and loss of confidence in representative organisations are not confined to angling. I believe just over 40% of those eligible to vote at the last election didn't bother. It's common to hear it said that "They're all the same and voting won't change anything", but oligarchs and wealthy backers know different, and put lots of their money into getting elected those who'll make changes they want to see. It shouldn't be that hard to grasp that you have to be in it to win it, to coin a phrase. but lots of us anglers just aren't in it.

 

[mikench]

I thought I had won the Eskimo lottery but discovered you had to be Inuit to win it.
I’ll get my coat but before I do , I have just joined AT. You shamed me into doing so Kev.

 

[nottskev]

I thought I had won the Eskimo lottery but discovered you had to be Inuit to win it.
I’ll get my coat but before I do , I have just joined AT. You shamed me into doing so Kev.

At last! A joke with a good pun!

Hasty edit: You put up some good jokes, Mike. I have a friend who daily sends me laboured pun jokes. I'll send him that one to set the bar higher.

 

[ian g]

Joined as well

 

[rob48]

I'm just adding stuff rather than setting out to contradict you, Clive, but if you ask anyone who enjoyed fishing Trent Valley gravel pits eg members of Derby Railway, Pride of Derby, Notts Fed and lots of others, they are likely to tell you - with pics to prove it - it WAS, notwithstanding nostalgia, better yesterday.

As for weighing negative and positive, in the 90's I joined a small club that had nurtured into a lovely, well-managed mixed fishery a lake a short flight from the Dee estuary. When the cormorants increased and found it, the fishing soon collapsed and subsequent investigations - nettings, electro-fishing - showed it had been all but emptied of fish. We saw no positive side to that.

Maybe someone has an illuminating comment on this point. I often read, from people claiming a broader perspective on predators and prey, that there can't be too many predators, as "laws of nature" ensure that there can only be as many predators as the supply of prey will support, hence a natural balance will arise. Ok. But how does this apply in cases such as the one I just outlined, where flocks of travelling predators scour a wide area for feeding grounds, plunder a particular source until it's exhausted and then move on to another? It may be that in some global sense (perhaps over a region, or maybe the UK?) some balance may obtain, but that's of little interest to anglers who lose their waters in their locales. No "balance", such as you may find with native fish eating birds like grebes or herons, or predatory fish like pike, come to that, applied; the alien predators simply wiped the fishery out and then f'ed off elsewhere.

Having fished the Trent regularly since the 70s, and been a member of DRAC, DAA, Burton Mutual, Bass/Coors, Alrewas, and a few others, my experience was that the cormorant problem only arose when the water quality of the river "improved" ie: became clearer. The first noticeable effect of this was the disappearance of the large gudgeon shoals and an inability to be able to put decent bags of roach together from the usual two rods stick float line. It seemed that the fish felt more secure further from the bank and in greater depths in the clearer water.
I can't be sure but I'd guess this started in the late 80s/early 90s and it wasn't long afterwards (mid 90s?) that the cormorants began to show in numbers. They appeared to remain on the river until their increasing population and subsequent reduction in food fish saw them migrate to the many established gravel pit fisheries in the Trent valley and surrounding areas. Kingsbury Water Park, a once-popular gravel pit complex established from aggregate extraction for construction of the M42 with the River Tame running through it was stripped virtually bare inside two years, and most other venues in the area suffered similar fates.
I'm convinced that if the water had retained its reduced visibilty of the early 80s period the cormorants wouldn't have farmed the river because the location of prey fish would have been too difficult for them to bother trying.

 

[nottskev]

Yes, all that looks true. I only moved here in 2004, but the changes you describe through the 90's were widely reported and commented on. I'd be the first to agree that, around here and in some other areas on the river, the recovery has been way beyond what looked likely 20 years ago. Are there reasons why the river can recover so much more successfully than the pits that shared the hammering from cormorants? Understanding what is affecting what can be hard. Fish are prolific and abundant in the Trent at the Derwent confluence, yet go any distance up the Derwent itself and you'll find, to quote an official of the controlling club " very little to fish for" even though it was itself prolific not all that long ago and appears, on the surface, to have better conditions.

 

[peterjg]

The above two posts also apply to the Thames. In 'normal' conditions the Thames is clearer (not cleaner!) and this tends to push the 'remaining' roach either further out into deeper/faster water or to hide under cover during daylight. Roach are naturally light conscious but now fishing after dark is almost compulsory in normal conditions.

 

[Steve Arnold]

The above two posts also apply to the Thames. In 'normal' conditions the Thames is clearer (not cleaner!) and this tends to push the 'remaining' roach either further out into deeper/faster water or to hide under cover during daylight. Roach are naturally light conscious but now fishing after dark is almost compulsory in normal conditions.

A few days ago I decided to fish for a few hours a couple of miles downstream of Cajarc. My idea was to fish just into darkness and see if that would bring a few fish after the cormorants departed to their roosts.

Well the cormorants were working the very clear water, they departed about 40 minutes before it was properly dark, a little later the first fish sploshed on the surface, probably a barbel. A few minutes later a bigger fish did the same about 50 metres downstream, then I had two splashy swirls about 15 metres from my bank about where I had put in some balls of heavy groundbait.

It started raining heavily then so I decided to go home. Although I caught no fish I was pleased that there had at least been fish in the area. Was it the cormorants leaving or darkness approaching that encouraged their eventual surface activity?

Anyway, I was pleased to have another clue, maybe I should try a few hours into darkness soon and see if the barbel will settle to feed once they feel safe to move around?

I took a little drive along the river today, the water is certainly not clear at the moment!

We have had quite a lot of rain, I will try to fish when the river starts dropping. If there is still some colour the fish may feel safe to feed, certainly there will be little light penetration at dusk

 

[Alan Whitty]

The barbel aren't under cormorant threat, so I would think in clear winter river conditions they will have a small window of activity around dark, on the small river some of us fish it is notably apparent barbel start moving around an hour before dark...I take it this must happen on most rivers at this time of year...

 

[nottskev]

I mentioned in an earlier post the club water near the Dee estuary that was wiped out by cormorants. I nearly wrote "decimated", but that means killing only one in ten.... I came across this table on a local birdwatching site. It shows the increase in cormorant numbers in the estuary. The article is interesting in what it reveals of a certain type of bird mindset: avid attention to the increase in cormorant numbers, no interest in their impact on the environment they're invading, and the writer refers to fish as "the four-letter F..." word, which implies that anyone who sees fish as more than fodder for sea birds is just a nuisance.

Dee Estuary News April 2015

A Birdwatching Guide to The Dee Estuary including descriptions of the prime birding sites and maps

www.deeestuary.co.uk

 

[bennygesserit]

So far in this article I have refrained from using the four letter 'F' word - that is to say Fish! Because Cormorants eat fish they have come into conflict with man over many centuries, but particularly during the 19th century and the first half of the 20th. European legislation in the 20th century resulted in a big increase in numbers as previously stated, but this has now brought them into further conflict with the fishery industry and culling is now once again taking place, albeit in a controlled manner. Whether this culling is really necessary is disputed.

On the subject of culling and persecution I finish with some quotes and if anybody has any problems with what they say please take it up with the authors, and not me!

David Norman (Ref 13): The Cormorants' move to breeding and wintering inland in the UK is an apt metaphor for man's abuse of the environment. Man has ovefished the seas and overstocked some inland waters; it is not surprising that this adaptable seabird has responded.

S. Van Rijn (Ref 14): No significant conflicts with commercial fisheries occur at present in the Netherlands. Most commercial fisheries are aware that Great Cormorants are not the main problem concerning the general decline of the commercial fish catch. The fact that the Netherlands have no active management or regulation of breeding numbers is unique in Europe. This shows that communication about the ecological position of Great Cormorants and other fish-eating birds can result in a better understanding of a changing world.​

Linda Wires (Ref 15): .....I have visited many cormorant colonies, and come to realise that this bird is one of the most remarkable creatures I have ever encountered.
.....the extent to which cormorants actualy harm human interests is unclear. Some prey species are commercially valuable but the bulk of the cormorant's diet consists of species not valued by humans. And despite it's reputation for devouring fish, its daily food consumption relative to body mass is no greater than that for other fish-eating birds. To date no study has demonstrated that cormorants pose a threat to the survival of healthy fish populations in natural systems.
Ultimately, the cormorant's story reflects a culture still deeply prejudiced against creatures that exist outside the boundaries of human understanding and acceptance. To determine wildlife policy for these and other such creatures in the absence of scientific evidence is deeply flawed.

 

[bennygesserit]

Above is the f word Kev referred to