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Fish killer - a surprising culprit, you say?

Depressing reading indeed. I knew things were getting bad because I could see it escalating in my own area....but I didn't realise quite how bad or widespread it is.

I moved to the area I now live in over forty years ago, and for a long time there were no signs of the problems to come. At that time the Chess, a beautiful little chalk stream, supported an impressive head of brown trout....and I am talking about virtually up to it's source. There was even the remnants of a watercress industry then too, with a line of artesian wells pouring pure chalk filtered water into the beds that produced the wonderful cress.

Sadly, the watercress beds are no more. The artesian wells were capped off with stainless steel well heads, and a massive bottling plant was built on the site. Lorry loads of high profit 'spring water' used to leave the plant on a regular basis, but I haven't even seen that recently...perhaps they have sucked the aquifers dry? Who knows. I do know that the pumping station a mile or two above the town is very likely the reason for the lack of water in our river. Wherever the truth lies, it is a fact that in my time in the area, the river Chess has gone from a lovely, strongly flowing chalk stream, heavily populated by brown trout....to a sad thing that struggles to support a few sticklebacks. The decline would appear to run fairly parallel with the population increase.

So, that is a brief view of the devastating decline of one tiny chalk stream. By the sound of it, that has been replicated all over the country. What are we doing? Can you begin to imagine how much worse it's likely to get, especially in view of the current world crisis? If you haven't viewed the contents of the link Darren provided, just take a look at this tiny excerpt below.

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And it turns out that there is nothing special about the Ouse. The whole southern and south-east region is officially classified by the Environment Agency as being under “serious water stressâ€. Consider this stunning statement buried in one of the agency’s reports on the south-east river basin, which runs along the south coast from Hampshire through Sussex to Kent: “There are concerns over maintaining the water resources available for people and the environment in this part of England. This river basin district has some of the highest levels of personal water use in the country while, on average, the amount of water available per person is less than for Morocco or Egypt.â€

Time to panic?

Cheers, Dave.
 
[QUOTE=Neil Smart;181206]When someone asks for evidence, you just know they have lost the argument.
I really don't need to get embroiled into another Otter argument, pretty much everyone's ideas are set, and no amount of debating will change anyone's views.
As no amount of finger pointing at Mr O will persuade anyone the Otter should be culled, so you better just live with it , for me to share the river bank with such creatures is a privelidge , I can't help think that the Carp pond mentality is very much part of some river anglers on here.
Please shoot me the day I just want to catch fish and not consider the other creatures that have more of a right to be there then any angler?
The End...[/QUOTE]

That wouldn't be because you have none would it, good job science isn't based on that theory


I have offered you the chance to change my opinion, I only need some evidence that Otters haven't damaged Barbel stocks, have you got some or are your opinions based on emotion?


Who said anything about culling? certainly not me I believe I have mentioned contraception before a method used in lots of places to control numbers

Please don't tell me what to do its very rude, it would also be nice if you knew what my mentality towards rivers was before making yet another sarcastic remark
 
Neil.
Please refer to a map. Another guess made as a statement of fact.

Should have taken my advice to think first. I tried to help.

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Getting a habit.

Gaz
 
Paul Dowgill said:
The article hits the nub of the issue - it is about water supply and river basin management, sorry guys but otter 'damage' is minimal in comparison yet it is the easy target so we spend pages on BFW arguing about this - if we do not address the big problems that the article refers to there will be no fish for otters or us.
Click to expand...

Spot on that Paul, sadly we'll still be getting bored senseless by yet more otter threads than anything I fear.

It really is a depressing article and a problem I can't see getting any better anytime soon unless we address the real issue facing the world, that being there's too many people.
 
And lets hope they don't. One factor that might be relevant is the fishing pressure this fishery gets. On the short walk particularly there are anglers on the bank dawn to dusk, Winter, Autumn and Summer, in fact such is the pressure on the 'hot' swims lots have to be drawn at the start of the day, believe it or not.
My worry here, and I am very much in favour of the traditional close season, is that in the close season the Otters might well get there with no disturbance on the banks.
This was, I've heard, probably why they were able to munch the big Barbel up on the Ivel.
A thought that occurred to me recently:-
In the great scheme of things the lack of Otters in our rivers for the last few hundred years is a tiny proportion of the time Barbel have been in them, and the time Barbel have been stocked into rivers that never had a population naturally is even smaller.
Natural selection, evolution, whatever you call it, would have meant that the natural Barbel population was obviously made up of fish that had not been eaten by Otters, if they were too slow or not cautious enough they ended up as Otter food.
The breeding stock for Calverton, I believe about 30 fish from the Kennet, over the years must have been virtually inbred so much the naturally slow and stupid fish have entered the gene pool and with each generation from there things must get worse and worse.
Assuming we still have enough water in our rivers in a couple of hundred years and the habitats haven't been destroyed a natural balance between the Barbel and the Otters will once more resume.
Presently the Barbel are mostly artificially stocked with almost no inbuilt fear of Otters.
The Otters are artificially stocked with almost no inbuilt fear of man.

Personally, I am no Otter fan and think the stocking of them is just the last in a long list of stupid decisions and actions by the EA and others.
 
Hi Paul, I don't share some opinions that the barbel in the Ivel have been scoffed because of a lack of pressure during the closed season (the biggest fish has only in recent weeks, been been scoffed), in fact I'd go as far as to say that's a load of poppycock. The fish in the Ivel are/were living besides a very busy public footpath, used night and day. The fish that lived in the Ouse at Adam's, lived in the most pressured stretch of river in the country. Much of the Ouse (Radwell/Milton Earnest especially) had seen plenty of pressure, night and day.

Otters don't have their natural selection of prey (eels) in abundance, that they once had. When eels return to the stocks that were in our river systems, say 40 years ago, then we may well see the barbel return to grace our nets on a regular basis.

It's not just the barbel that I and many of my fellow fishers are missing, but also the great shoals of chub from the middle/upper Ouse have also been decimated. I'm not sure how they're fairing on rivers such as the Dorset Stour, Hants Avon, Teme.............

I'm also concerned that otters are less territorially conscious than when they were a totally wild creature and not cared and nursed for in close proximity to each other, before being released into the wild.

This video shows just how 'shy' otters are now. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FLEzdYJaDc
 
I must sadly agree about the decline in fish stocks generally. The over abstraction, canalization, the crayfish, the mitten crabs, the Carp ,the decline of the Eels the EE's have made our rivers very different to what they were years ago. Over time I have noticed that Chub populations in particular seem to vary wildly from very few to an abundance over a cycle of a few years. For many years there were virtually no Chub ever caught in the tidal Thames, it was all Roach and Dace, then they started to get quite common. Likewise the Roach and Dace populations seemed to rise and fall over time.
Another upper Lea fishery very near Marford a few years ago had loads of good sized Chub, now they are far fewer but there does seem to be a lot more small Barbel present and a LOT of Chublets, almost as numerous as Minnows. Stand by for a Chub explosion in a few years.
Radwell on the Ouse as we all know has far fewer Barbel and Chub than it did but apparently the silver fish have filled the void. A recent club match there produced something like 240lb of Roach for 20 anglers IIRC.
Massive shoals of Dace have appeared at another nearby Ouse fishery which has suffered Barbel and Chub losses.
I'll just carry on and make the most of what I can get when I can get it.
 
Graham Elliott said:
Neil.
Please refer to a map. Another guess made as a statement of fact.

Should have taken my advice to think first. I tried to help.

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Getting a habit.

Gaz
Click to expand...

Herefordshire is it? No matter Graham, however the main issue I thought was the hunting with dogs ban.
Sidestep?:)
 
Hi men,

Three years ago when fishing in France I spoke to a few local lads and told them that it won't take long before guided barbel fishing in france starts to get popular . The rivers are untapped , perhaps not like our fantastic river Windrush that we loved , but lots of unknown fishing, and in fact someone has already enquired on the potential of barbel fishing . I'm looking at fishing a Frence river next year for some wild carp, may take a barbel rod ;)


Hatter
 
Neil Smart said:
Well casually swimming or not, you saw an Otter, many would give his/ her right arm to see an Otter in the wild.

Hardly a 'blank'.
Click to expand...
I've seen 5 this season on the Wharfe and Swale, and tracks on several stretches that reveals their presence, seen chub busting out the water to get away from them, I didn't realise just how fast they are in the water till I watched two hunting the other week, like greased lightening.

I'm seeing far too many, Cormorants aswell, give it 10 years the rivers in this country will be a sad state of affairs for us anglers, it's coming, no two ways about it.
 
Darren Scott said:
I've seen 5 this season on the Wharfe and Swale, and tracks on several stretches that reveals their presence, seen chub busting out the water to get away from them, I didn't realise just how fast they are in the water till I watched two hunting the other week, like greased lightening.

I'm seeing far too many, Cormorants aswell, give it 10 years the rivers in this country will be a sad state of affairs for us anglers, it's coming, no two ways about it.
Click to expand...

I met a guy on the Lower Severn last week, not an angler, but a wildlife enthusiast and particularly Otter. He spends a lot of time looking for and tracking Otter, he said on a river like the Severn he reckons that they are pretty sparsely distributed, no more than one per each mile or so.

A recent winter he saw Otter tracks in the snow, and followed, they were met by another set, and the signs they were cavorting was evident, they then continued together, and it was only when he was at Worcester, that he realised he had tracked them for almost seven miles.

The guy's enthusiasm was infections, he simply loved Otters, probably as much as I love Barbel, try telling him they are just big rats.

Not so sure I share your ten years doom theory, however I do think the real problems lie elsewhere, and it's not predation.
 
Neil Smart said:
When someone asks for evidence, you just know they have lost the argument.

I really don't need to get embroiled into another Otter argument, pretty much everyone's ideas are set, and no amount of debating will change anyone's views.
As no amount of finger pointing at Mr O will persuade anyone the Otter should be culled, so you better just live with it , for me to share the river bank with such creatures is a privelidge , I can't help think that the Carp pond mentality is very much part of some river anglers on here.
Please shoot me the day I just want to catch fish and not consider the other creatures that have more of a right to be there then any angler?
The End...
Click to expand...

As you have decided to renter this thread perhaps you could answer some points please.

1) Without evidence how can you or anyone else form an opinion based on fact, have you any evidence that there were to many Barbel in our rivers as you stated?

2) I have offered you the chance to change my opinion as I am always open to persuasion based on fact, have you any that might do that partially or fully?

3) I have never in all the debates on here about otters mentioned culling, contraception could be used to control numbers, why do you think that everyone that is anti otter at the moment wants them culled?

I look forward to your answers, unless you sidestep these as well.
 
Neil Smart said:
I met a guy on the Lower Severn last week, not an angler, but a wildlife enthusiast and particularly Otter. He spends a lot of time looking for and tracking Otter, he said on a river like the Severn he reckons that they are pretty sparsely distributed, no more than one per each mile or so.

A recent winter he saw Otter tracks in the snow, and followed, they were met by another set, and the signs they were cavorting was evident, they then continued together, and it was only when he was at Worcester, that he realised he had tracked them for almost seven miles.

The guy's enthusiasm was infections, he simply loved Otters, probably as much as I love Barbel, try telling him they are just big rats.

Not so sure I share your ten years doom theory, however I do think the real problems lie elsewhere, and it's not predation.
Click to expand...


while I would agree that our rivers face numerous problems and not just predation I am a little confused by your comment that" predation is not the problem" considering that you had the view that pre otter reintroduction "there were to many otters in our rivers" that would have been while the problems that exist today were also there would it? doesn't seem to make sense to me.
 
Graham Young said:
while I would agree that our rivers face numerous problems and not just predation I am a little confused by your comment that" predation is not the problem" considering that you had the view that pre otter reintroduction "there were to many otters in our rivers" that would have been while the problems that exist today were also there would it? doesn't seem to make sense to me.
Click to expand...

OK fine.

But did I say there were just too many Otters in our rivers?:rolleyes:

However for the sake of everyone sanity can we move on Graham?
 
Interesting debate going on here. Funny thing is (not funny really) is that I've just returned from a fantastic week's walking holiday in the Lake District. We stayed on a typical working sheep and beef farm. One morning I asked our wonderful hostess, what was her husband's (farmer) view on raptors was. We were given a sideways and raised eyebrows look. ie they weren't tolerated.
This I was to understand was the general rule of thumb in this district.

I wonder what the farmer's opinion would be had they farmed trout or salmon, with otters aiming to scoff their stock.
 
Probably be much the same as that from one of the many carp lake owners Chris, those who have lost their complete stock, their entire investment, their living....everything. They are all just ordinary working people though, so never mind, it would have cost the government a fortune to provide fencing to protect their livelihood. Thinking about that, it cost a fortune to protect ot.....errr no, probably best not to go there.

Cheers, Dave.
 
Neil Smart said:
OK fine.

But did I say there were just too many Otters in our rivers?:rolleyes:

However for the sake of everyone sanity can we move on Graham?
Click to expand...



I think you know very well what you said about to many barbelin the rivers Neil.

I can leave this as I never expected you to show me any evidence that predators were not the problem, I don't mind you sidestepping questions, I can even put up with the "penny drops" comments what I will never leave is the fact that otters were released without any thought of the impact they would have and now we are seeing the results.
 
Graham, if he answers your questions but continues to ignore mine (you know, those in one of my previous posts, the ones he needed time to think about, back in the dim distant past)....then I shall sulk. Actually, I am already sulking.

Neil tells me that I should stop harking on about him being anti carp, stop falsely accusing him of being anti carp fishermen too, because he isn't, no sir, not one teeny weeny bit. He says I am paranoid about it, that he has never said any such thing nor ever would.

So, I am not sure which wicked person it was who inserted the following into poor Neil's post two days ago on this thread.....

"I can't help think that the Carp pond mentality is very much part of some river anglers on here".

Whoever did that, stop it at once. Poor Neil has enough problems already, without maliciously trying to make him sound dishonest.

Cheers, Dave.
 
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