The Enchanting Killer Pt2

It is gratifying that my article relating to the otter problem created a debate, as it is important that all anglers understand the problems that may arise for fisheries due to the introduction and spread of this animal. I would like to thank those who have supported my views, but for those who do not know me and possibly criticised I would like to clarify why I have evolved certain views during a long experience of life.

The Test was also a very good salmon river

Various things have made me cynical of authority and of experts in many fields, whether scientists or not, and during my lifetime I have seen the rape of the land, the rape of rivers, water abstraction for wasteful activities, dredging, especially of my beloved River Kennet and Dorset Stour, commercial fish farms allowed to proliferate on our beautiful rivers, damage to rivers by all sorts of industry including watercress farms, and although fish farms and cress farms have been improved they still do damage. I have recent Reports by CEFAS about fish farms which show that they should be closed down, but yet more Reports will be undertaken rather than any action. Then there has been the introduction of signal crayfish, Protection Orders put on cormorants and otters, and I often wonder who can anglers turn to to protest. The only MP who has voiced any concern that I know of is Martin Salter, and he is standing down at the next election I believe. 

A 20lb salmon about to go off to the brood-stock tank

As a young man I came to realise that whatever happens to the rivers of this Country is, directly or indirectly, due to politics, and politics affects us all in every way, including our sport of angling. Policies are instituted that affect the countryside, rivers, and streams, with very little thought to long-term consequences, and the varying buracracy that run it all has little or no insight as to what present actions may cause in the future.

It may be because I have written articles and complained to authorities for over 40 years, that Fishing Magic asked me to pen an article explaining my views about the otter problem, and the fact that I own a small non-commercial fishery which has had damage to some of the fish due to otters, as was seen in the photographs that I supplied. My fishery is a short stretch of the River Test, long renowned throughout the world as a great chalk stream and a great trout stream, but what was not so well known is that it was also a very good salmon river in its lower reaches. In fact, after Kay and I bought the stretch 33 years ago, we were told by Peggy Baring, who was then Secretary of the Test and Itchen Association, that we sometimes caught 10% of the rod-caught salmon catch of the whole river. Over the last couple of decades though, salmon catches have decreased considerably on most of the rivers in the South, and consequently Kay and I stopped killing salmon in 1990 on any river. As we no longer killed them may be why the NRA asked me to catch salmon for them for a radio tagging programme. I did this between 1991 and 1994, and I also caught salmon for the NRA/EA from 1995 until 2003 for a broodstock programme..

I don’t want it thought that Kay and I were only salmon anglers, as although we both had a great love of salmon fishing we were mainly coarse fishers, and consequently we nurtured the stretch, and with the help of good friends we have made a very good coarse fishery as well as a good trout fishery, and although the salmon fishing is nowhere near as good as it was I still catch a few each season. Also, all fisheries over the whole river have now adopted a VOLUNTARY policy of returning  to the river all salmon caught, and the only salmon killed are by poachers or otters.

A fish is returned after having a transmitter fitted into its stomach

As for my attitude to angling and anglers as a fishery owner, I should perhaps point out that, apart from monies paid to charities including the local hospital, when days here have been auctioned, not one penny has ever been paid to me by anyone who has fished here – and that runs into thousands of angling days over the years.

For the benefit of one of the rather abusive forum posters I do not hate otters. I think they are a wonderful animal just as I do dogs, cats, and all the wild animals that still have the opportunity to exist where there is still the right habitat. What I dislike and disagree with is that I do not have the right to protect my fishery from them, and they have been allowed or introduced where they may interfere with the hard work that fishery owners, fishing clubs, and many anglers have put into fisheries.

Although I have friends within the Fisheries Division of the Environment Agency, I also have disagreements with them, but over the whole concept of the Environment Agency, one would think by its very name that all its officers outside of that Division would still have knowledge of the tie-ups between the effect of one creature upon another, of the ecology that links creatures and the environment, and how all links between land and water and its creatures fashion that environment. But do they? An example: 

Not so long ago an officer of the EA requested that we remove the concrete sandbag retaining wall below the old mill which contains the main sluices. Anybody who knows anything about rivers and obstructions in rivers will know that below weirs, mills, and such, much turbulence and back-eddies are created. This causes the banks downstream for a distance to erode unless they are protected by some form of banking. When told this the EA guy said that would be OK as it would be more natural if the bank was washed away. He also requested that we installed an OTTER HOLT downstream of the mill where salmon have cut redds for the 60 years I have known the stretch. 

We sometimes caught 10% of the rod-caught salmon catch of the whole river

According to the NRA/EA in the ‘Salmon Action Plans’ that they seem to regularly produce, the runs of salmon in the River Test have been at almost unsustainable numbers for some years, and yet an EA Officer wished to encourage otters to breed where salmon spawn. It is bad enough that otters are released in an area where a river’s natural species are at risk, but encouraging them to breed in such areas????????????

Obviously we refused to comply, and when the EA guy took it up with the Fisheries Division they upheld our decision.

What annoys  me about this sort of thing is that the Officer is part of an Authority that is either insensitive, inconsiderate, or just bloody ignorant of other’s wishes, and it is also the sort of thing that makes me mistrust any authority’s policies.

The figure of 117 otters released I distrust, just as I didn’t believe the 45 minute statement. Having won 3 Public Inquiries relating to my stretch of river, and helped to win a fourth, I have first-hand knowledge of the manipulation of fact by authority. Why is it that those with the greatest authority will never answer a question.

A good article by Tony Miles has appeared in this month’s ‘Coarse Fishing Today,’ in which he writes of the damage already caused by otters, and he is of the same opinion as I that they will continue to do untold damage in the future. He writes of the fish killed in the Thames and tributaries, the Ouse and Wensum, and I have seen an otter on the lower Severn where the stock of barbel has deteriorated, and I have heard the same has happened to the River Teme where there is also evidence of otters.

“All fisheries over the whole river have now adopted a VOLUNTARY policy of returning to the river all salmon caught”

Some of those who posted replies to my article have implied that it will balance out and otters will take their place within the environment. They won’t! I have said elsewhere that the balance of nature is rubbish. Nature is an imbalance or else there would not have been evolution. It would have been unnecessary. The biggest proof of that is mankind, who is spreading around the world as the biggest uncontrolled parasite the world has experienced since life started.

Do some of the forum posters really believe that otters will kill mink but not the voles that mink kill, that they won’t kill birds or anything else they can catch, or raid the nests of waterbirds and riverside birds. Do they really believe that there will be enough recruitment even if the adult fish, the breeding stock, are wiped out.

I liked the forum post that said that there is a law that states, ‘Fisheries must be maintained and improved.’ Some hope! The day that act is ever used by some authority against the ignorance of the public, 95% of whom will only have ever seen our wildlife from an armchair, or in a Zoo. They will never see the wasteful killing of large fish by otters, or any suggestion from wildlife presenters that they are a pest, or told why the animal was hunted, or why dogs were specially bred for the purpose of hunting the animal as it was such a pest. Nowhere have I ever seen it stated by those who wish the animal to spread uncontrolled around the Country that it was considered a pest. All that has been ignored.

Dave Steuart