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Restocking mature barbel on rivers..

Craig Wood

Craig Wood

Senior Member
As we all know from angling press and websites such as bfw some rivers not all have experienced mature female barbel losses due to otters returning..Firstly i would like to say im not saying cull the otters because in fairness its not their fault..But i would be interested in everyones thoughts about restocking mature female barbel in rivers where their numbers have declined..I dont know if this is a good idea or a bad one which is why im asking the question to everyone on here..
Regards craig.
 
Hi Chris, Juvenile yes, but mature could be a serious no no. I for one have nil experience maybe some fellow member could elaborate on mature Barbel. For all rivers that have been afflicted by hungry Otters, you have my condolences and that's for all aquatic species, but while the Otter is there you are only filling its belly IMO. Or it could always die via, abstraction, pesticide, flood management etc or even old age which is always a winner IMO.
 
I think that there is something in the river knowledge imprinted on mature barbel memories too? I am not exactly sure but this is pretty important regarding the spacial distribution (home ranges) & habitat preference of barbel across the season especially with respect to spawning sites? Or could an introduced (mature) barbel mimic the behavioural ecology of the (limited in this instance) remaining (un-predated) barb inhabitants?

Cheers, Jon

PS answering a question with a question - sorry bout that...
 
Wonderful idea, but where do you think these mature barbel are to be found?
Maybe raised on pellets and therefore ready primed to accept anglers baits.

And if a source of suitable fish is found/established, realistically who is going to pay for it all, the EA, dream on!

Seeing as barbel actually have no natural right to reside in most UK rivers surely better place a non-natural resident fish into the river that's more likely to thrive.....
Here's a suggestion CARP; Greater longlevity, more resilient to low oxygen levels and poor flow rates plus best of all cheap to buy, perfect I'd say:rolleyes:.


Better option would be to work at making the habitat on the rivers better and therefore natural recruitment of ALL river species could and would occur.
 
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Craig, I'm not sure where these rivers are you refer to where there are few female barbel left?? Otters, are not, to my knowledge selective when it comes to the sex of fish they kill!!

If the case did exist where there were no female fish, I would say it was due more to many, many years of failed recruitment, probably caused by the fish being non-indigenous and the river habitat unable to support it......

If the river in question is a natural barbel river then work needs doing on habitat or water quality to aid recruitment.........

The only way to stock big female barbel would be to either breed them in captivity, calverton for example, i.e. a stillwater...........and they might be ready for introduction in 15 or 20 years............however, not having spawned in all that time, they would be unlikely to when introduced, for the first time in their lives, to a river environment.........

Or should they be removed from some other poor soles river??

Barbel stocking, which has been successful in the past is done with small fish, however, there is absolutely no point in stocking a river where natural spawning is failing as that just moves the problem 10 or 15 years down the line, which I suspect is what we are all suffering from today........
 
You cannot buy mature barbel legally in this country. Those produced by the EA at Calverton are year-one fish (about 5 to 7ins long). Stocking year-one fish is a dodgy business that is likely to succeed in only a small percentage staying put in the fishery, as most will drop downstream or disappear altogether. Last winter 800 specially reared year-two fish were stocked into the Wensum in an attempt to support the barbel fisheries, all of which had been hammered by otters. It was hoped that by stocking larger fish, the success rate of the stocking would be higher, time will tell if this is right. Personally I'd say that stocking year-three fish would be better still - possibly they would already be mature enough to spawn. However, 3-year old fish are not available.

As for the rights and wrongs of stocking fish that ultimately will probably mostly end up eaten by otters, if we want our fisheries to survive on a social/economic basis there may not be any choice. Certainly this was the case on the Wensum, which suffers high predation levels coupled with very low fry-recruitment levels for all species. Improving habitat is certainly a priority, but this can only be done if the fishery is making sufficient income to finance it (though it is sometimes possible to gain lottery funding). Even so, many of the current environmental problems facing our rivers, such as siltation and abstraction cannot be overcome by creating in-stream improvements.
 
I think your definitely right there Chris, Stocking is a must on my local river at the moment as the native stock as almost dissapeared. The EA have started doing this but they are only the year one plus fish so survival rates will be very low i should imagine, However the area they are stocking into is short impounded stretch approx 3miles long so it will be interstesting to see if this ups the survival rate as they may tend to stay shoaled together and hopefully reproduce at a higher rate rather than just dissapear.

Lots of similar problems out ther on many rivers that are rearing there ugly heads and to be honest I don't think the EA can do much about them as Chris said you can still create a perfect habitat such as perfect gravels, cleaner water and backwaters and then stock it....but this does not adress the underlying problems such as abstraction, signal crays and predation.

Small rivers around my way are buckling under the strain now from mainly signals and reserch now is showing what an effect they are having....mainly that they can make a river devoid of fish and invertabrates fish feed on, even the crays predating on small fish. A very much unseen underwater problem.

Chris your friend Simon said to me last year that our local river looked sick and he was spot and the EA don't have the answers so like you said stocking is the only real option until the EA come up with any answers....I doubt they will be able to though

Cheers
Jason
 
Poor old EA (or any outfit, for that matter), having to pick up the pieces of the wreckage that modern Brits with all their cars and roads and squeaky-clean, water-heavy, amenity- and product-rich "lifestyles" leave behind. Anglers: we expect a motorway (or at least decent, traffic-free dual carriageway) to get us to our bit of water without let or hindrance, then expect the river and its surrounds to be as it was in 1860. The difficulties of matching modern reality to impossible "I want" expectations, eh...?
 
Fair point paul..Man is fully to blame for the enviroments decline..Where i live in dorset theres concerns regarding new houses being built,the concern is where is the extra water going to come from for these new housing estates..Unfortunately it will be the river itchen which no dought will also suffer..River fishings future does not look too good in the future..Sad but true i think..Interesting comments from everyone im beginning to think that on certain rivers fishing for barbel will just become a fading memory..
 
As many know, taking mature barbel from one river to stock another river was done legally and illegally in the past. As Chris says, Calverton only keep breed barbel for 2-2+ years and then release. The space to breed and keep fish to mature to a higher age and size is not practical or available or cost effective, as Calverton breed other species as well.
Some recent stockings with small barbel to replenish ailing stocks due to predation or non-breeding/recruitment of existing populations is only a 'quick fix' and ‘precautionary’ measure’ to 'maintain' that the indigenous/native species is still present and not wiped out completely, to where the EA may become part liable in their duty, i.e. Failing To Maintain, Improve and Develope fisheries.
In my opinion, I still think that the stocking of small barbel into rivers that have ongoing problems with natural recruitment due to habitat and low water quality should be addressed beforehand. As you might know, the goalposts linked to water quality were continuously widened by the NRA in the late 1980’s onwards to allow more damaging pollution to enter our rivers to where the polluters were exempt from prosecution. Therefore, a lot of the river water quality classifications (RQO’s) were deliberately downgraded without being re-classified.
Even though the EA nowadays find rivers suitable (in their mind) to stock barbel, it is based on a much lower criteria than in the past, to where the barbel's response and state of health and recruitment say’s different.
Bar Otters, I still think that ‘Water Quality’ incorporating lower Oxygen Levels due to high inputs of sewage works discharges with less dilution due to High Abstraction is the big problem for barbel in that they cannot tolerate this over the longer period of time.
Yes, they may survive for a period in the short term, but they could end up living a life of hell and eventually die a slow and lingering death. However, as mentioned, Carp and other more pollutant tolerant species, which require a lower oxygen level can be seen to thrive in these conditions and begin to dominate an area or river, to where barbel and other ‘less tolerant’ species which require ‘high’ oxygen levels will ‘decline’ in population numbers….Ray
 
I recall Pete Reading saying during a presentation that they were experimenting with traps into which fertilised eggs were placed and from where the newly hatched fry would enter the river. This was much cheaper than rearing the fish and because they developed in the river like natural fish they were much more "street wise" and had a better chance of survival than fish raised in the ponds at Calverton.

Note sure if anything ever came of this idea as the EA still seem to be stocking small fish everywhere but it certainly made sense.

If the river environment is changing and now favours alternative species then maybe natural selection should be allowed to take its course. The Trent used to be full of silver fish, now its full of barbel, so sometimes natural selection is to the barbel anglers advantage and sometimes not.

Stephen
 
Stephen Fisher. That comment by Pete Reading poses a useful idea, and it's a method I have considered using myself. It may be of interest that my Brother has been involved in doing the same thing with brown trout in a river he manages in Germany. While it did work to some extent, he has found that stocking numbers of fertile adult trout at the end of the season has resulted in far more fry being produced. Of course this raises the issue of he failing to support the wild native strains of brown trout, though in this case mergansers had already wiped them out.
 
Chris

It is interesting that you say this method has been adopted for trout with some success. The situation for trout is obviously somewhat different to barbel if fertile adult fish are available for release into the river.

It stuck in my mind as possibly being a good option for the upper Swale, introducing large numbers of fry on a regular basis that would eventually populate the whole river system rather than infrequent stockings of small fish made at different points along the length of the the river.

Stephen
 
Surely, without addressing all the underlying problems resulting in the dramatic decline of barbel in many river systems, further stockings are pointless, clutching at straws!!!!!!
Its a shame, but the barbel boom, would appear to be heading to history, even the lower Thames, source of many introductions has a big problem, numbers down etc, not Otters to blame here.
peter
 
Personally I think that river angling will soon reach a point where we will have to make a decision. This being, do we want to manage the rivers by regularly restocking, or are we prepared to watch them collapse and do nothing? The fact is that this country is now massively overpopulated and this burden is destroying the ecology, with rivers feeling the effects as much as anything. With the best will in the world, we can improve the in-stream habitat but if the river's silt load is cementing up the gravel spawning grounds, abstraction is damaging the flow rates and otters are hammering the adult fish, then eventually restocking could be our only real option. In the final analysis, I think most of us would rather manage our rivers than abandon them?
 
Chris Turnbull said:
Personally I think that river angling will soon reach a point where we will have to make a decision. This being, do we want to manage the rivers by regularly restocking, or are we prepared to watch them collapse and do nothing? The fact is that this country is now massively overpopulated and this burden is destroying the ecology, with rivers feeling the effects as much as anything. With the best will in the world, we can improve the in-stream habitat but if the river's silt load is cementing up the gravel spawning grounds, abstraction is damaging the flow rates and otters are hammering the adult fish, then eventually restocking could be our only real option. In the final analysis, I think most of us would rather manage our rivers than abandon them?
Click to expand...

Of course you are correct Chris
If Abstraction levels rise which they will do, this will then concentrate the increased sewage effluents, endocryne disruptors, chemicals, heavy metals and run offs as well, which in turn will downgrade the water quality even more. Less dissolved oxygen available for the fish, discharges become toxic to everything in hot weather, macro invertebrates etc. With this, stocked barbel would not survive either as they will not be able to tollerate and survive such **** degraded river conditions.
However, continuous stocking to maintain the barbel and other species is an EA 'maintain' the species procedure in hoping something will change for the better in the future, to where one day, some of the fish may survive to maturity to breed again 'naturally'.
Best Regards...Ray
 
The thought of our river fisheries being run along similar lines to 'put and take' trout fisheries does little for me. Trout anglers seem to live with it though, and modern carp angling isn't that much different in as much as it's all a matter of stocking (and otter fencing).

I guess it would work along the lines of we anglers putting the fish in and the otters taking them out?..... and hopefully between these two events the fish will grow and the anglers will catch enough of them to reward their input.

I suppose this would be better than nothing, but I am rather glad I'll have probably shuffled my mortal coil by the time river fishing comes to this...... on the other hand it could happen sooner than we think?
 
Indigenous?

Hi Ray,

My river has Barbel, but I'm fairly sure they are not indigenous (sp). Where do you see them as being so?

" maintain' that the indigenous/native species is still present and not wiped out completely, to where the EA may become part liable in their duty, i.e. Failing To Maintain, Improve and Develope fisheries"
 
I'm going off on a tangent here.... but I don't think the 'indigenous' aspect comes into the argument any longer. If a fishery is loosing its fish due to predation by otters, then this is going to damage the social/economic viability of that fishery. And the Agency has a legal requirement to 'maintain, develop and improve' fisheries. The onus is on the fishery to prove social/economic damage is/has occurred from predation of fish stocks. Obviously, the Agency are not going to come knocking on fisheries doors to top up their stocks..... what you get is what you fight for, in my experience!
 
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