The rivers are dead?

Are they? Last season saw bigger fish being caught from rivers. I wasn’t around to enjoy the glory days of the sixties and seventies when roach and river fishing went like bread and butter. Then came the pollution problems. But were these problems evident in the glory days? And that when the Earth took a turn to looking after the environment in the 80’s did the problems begin? How many factories poured waste into waterways in the glory days? Did the fish become familiar with the change? And when people were asking for the rivers to be cleaned up did the fish have to revert back to living in cleaner water?

Here’s my point. In England we have 56 million people living in just over 50 thousand square miles. Compare this with France who have 57 million people living in about 220 thousand square miles. Are there too many people living on this rock, this green and pleasant land?


Are rivers dead?
A lot of people require water, they also need quite a sewer as well, If you smell what I’m cooking. When the rivers were cleaned up, cleaner, treated water was put back in the waterways, The water authorities also decided that the river beds should be cleaned as well. To do this the beds are dredged, this actually rapes the river bed, cleaning up everything in it’s path; gravel bars, weed beds, etc.

Where the fish shoaled up and spawned is gone, thus reproduction is affected. Talking of the population problem a lot of rivers were abstracted thus turning once flowing rivers into trickles. Bottom line: are the rivers too clean? Or have that many forsaken the river for a mud hole that the fish have forgotten what maggots and casters look like?

Cormorants – The Black Luftwaffe.

If I put one word onto this site to get replies it has to be ‘cormorant’. This black Luftwaffe is most definitely a problem. It’s such a problem that a lot of people, including us anglers, do not really know enough about. We know it’s a marine bird, it has come inland to feed because there is not enough food in the sea. We are also told that an adult cormorant requires 500 grams of fish per day. One thing we are not told, and the cormorant experts probably don’t know, is how many fish die for a cormorant to feed?

Let me explain. You are a cormorant, you are circling your prey, roach, dozens of them, and you set your path and blitzkrieg. Your first roach, not big but a starter. Second bombing run you dive, your beak scathes the roach and you have missed the target. The roach, mortally wounded, stoops off to die a slow death.


The Black Luftwaffe
How many fish are subject to this near miss in a feeding frenzy? So how do we combat this black death? It’s no good saying an independent study is required. We’ve had one and that has hardly got us anywhere has it? You cannot cry for armed invasion and run to the nearest army surplus store for half a dozen bazookas.

One option for the commercial fishery owners view is to shallow up the depth of their water. Cormorants need quite a depth to dive and if this is not enough, then with the speed they are diving they will break their necks attempting. However, shallow water may affect the fishes feeding and welfare. The answer is that I do not know.

Youth

Most kids nowadays start fishing by accompanying their father. In turn their friend tags along and then another friend tags along. But is this enough to attract more kids to the sport? Can we let our kids out on their own with the peace of mind that they are not going to be hit by a crazy driver high on drugs or snatched by scum?

If you are not a fisherman how do you keep kids occupied in the school holidays? You buy them a video and Playstation, hopefully you see them in about four hours when they are hungry. But this is not the answer. You introduce kids into our sport. So why don’t commercial fisheries have open days, bait and lunch provided, if the required tackle could be hired?

You take a young lad, show him how to plumb up, cast, feed and watch for the perfect bite enigma. When that float goes under the reaction of the young lad says it all. I know I take my lad regularly, last week I took him to a canal, set him up with a three metre whip. In an hour and a half he’d had loads of gudgeon and small roach. I sat and watched, not wetting a line. The following day at school two parents asked to join us on our next expedition.

I live on a council estate, a very good family friend works for the local council. He has told me where five(!) child offenders are living. He has also told me that the council along with the police have to give priority to the welfare of these so-called humans. One of them lives on the same street as the school. At all times when my kids are out I am watching over them. But who else is?

The anti-angling brigade

These people also want to see the end of game shooting, falconry, fox hunting, and as daft as it sounds, butcher’s shops. Should the rural communities join up together and stand as one? Some of the anti’s are campaigner’s who campaign against everything. Saturday they’re on the river bank, Monday they are strapped to a tree to prevent building a bypass or a new stretch of motorway. They probably don’t know what they are fighting for or why. When a river becomes victim to an industrial accident who is first to cry? The anti’s? No, it’s you. You get to your peg and your prize chub is belly up. It’s you who raises the alarm. The bottom line is that the real anglers work and live and breathe in harmony with their environment.

Television

Get real people. Let’s have an angling show where the presenter goes to a real fishery where we all can go. Not a syndicate water, or Cuba, the Bahamas, or Miami, or Alaska, or Australia. Get where the working class dogs go. John Wilson has done a fantastic job for almost two decades but he cannot do it alone. Come on Matt Hayes. The enthusiasm is there, but stop the “my shit don’t smell” syndrome.

Food for thought my brothers. Have you your opinion?

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