David Gauntlett
Senior Member
Hi Ash
I just read through the thread again, trying to assimilate others thoughts on this subject, and came across your post again and remembered I had meant to respond to your thoughts earlier.
In the stretch of the Colne I am on about, there is almost nowhere for fish (especially large fish) to hide. There are very few undercut banks, very little ranunculus or other weeds to talk of (too much shade from overhanging trees in most places to allow it to grow), virtually no large, impenetrable (for otters) snags.....nothing. The EA flood prevention lads has seen to that (though that was it's nature anyway, to be fair) In times of normal levels, you have a river which, on average, is probably 20/30 feet wide and anything from 12" to 20" deep, with the odd channel on a few short stretchs approaching three feet. Anything deeper is exceptional, and would be a tiny pool. It has a gravel bed, but nowadays increasing areas of silt (due to the river running through and becoming the G.U. canal in places)...and some of these areas have small beds of cabbages growing, making them the only viable hiding place....which would be fine if barbel liked silt.....and these barbel certainly do not. It has an average flow speed of a slow walking pace, with occasional faster, narrower areas. It is nothing like the Ouse Ash, it has none of veritable jungles of weed, onion patches, reeds and so on, the mass of hiding places common to the upper Ouse, the Hampshire Avon and similar rivers. Rivers with mainly open banks are very different to tiny streams, shaded by trees on both banks for much of their length, for obvious reasons.
There are young fish coming through, the river is healthy enough for that...it is most certainly not a dying river, that is not the problem at all. It is the nature of the river, it's shallowness and general size and lack of hiding places that makes it so vulnerable. That is why I say that the river will not die in any event....but the size of the fish, the quality of the specimen fishing...is what will be lost...and for ever, if barbel take up residence long term. If you think about it, barbel, like all fish (and me) slow down as they get older. They swap the flashy, frantic speed of the 'splasher' sized youngsters and become solid, wonderful fish with immense strength and power...a test for any anglers skills....but NOT a problem for an otter. In a tiny river like this, a percentage of the fast youngsters will survive, but before long virtually all of the slower, 'sitting duck' big fish will be gone....NOT because they had reached the end of their life span...NOT because they weren't healthy...but because they had the bad luck to live in a habitat where there was nowhere for fish of their size to hide when suddenly a large predator turned up, a predator neither they, nor their parents and possibly their grandparents, whatever....had experienced before to any extent. What is worse, in a river like this, the continued presence of these otters will ensure that no future fish can grow to specimen size....the changing nature of fish as they mature will not allow that to happen in an open stream...which has an otter population.
These fish are NOT freaks, not like some much maligned carp that have originally been cross bred (like pigs and cattle) for the table. They are NOT gut buckets or unhealthy, overfed misshapen monsters barely able to move...they are just wonderful healthy BIG fish. They are not even exceptional, far from it....there are plenty of big to medium sized rivers that support similar (and bigger) sized fish, that is their natural eventual size in a healthy river of a suitable nature. Many of them reach this size while living alongside otters too....because their habitat is big enough, and /or provides enough natural hiding places, and/or an abundance of easy prey fish like bream etc....for otters not to be able, nor in fact need to bother them too much....a wonderful and happy situation for all. Sadly for them, the fish in my river have reached their quite natural large size because they happen to have lived in a more or less predator free zone for a very long time...how long I don't know. BUT...that doesn't make them some kind of 'freak', something unnatural and 'deserving to die' as some misguided people like to put it....they are just big fish, exactly like the big Trent and Severn fish or whatever...they have just arrived at those sizes for different reasons.
So...these lovely, healthy big fish, from a population which has given pleasure to anglers for a long time....are quite possibly about to disappear, along with the joy that they bought to so many anglers. Why? because it makes some folk happy that the predators that will cause their demise, predators that now seem bolder, much less wary of man, and willing to live in busy areas, areas they once shunned....are now spreading into their homes. Many of these people in all probability will have no inkling of the effects on other residents of our rivers that otters will wreak, and most probably couldn't care either way anyway. The fact is, the 'holy grail' is found, the oh so cute and cuddly otter, revelling in its film derived name 'Tarka'....is here. The culmination of many peoples efforts and hard work is here and established, and that is all that mattered. Quite a few of those people were involved in artificial breeding and rearing programmes. The possible effects of rearing animals which are naturally not gregarious in artificially close contact with others in confined spaces seems not to have been studied, nor probably cared about....and so remains unknown, both for those animals involved, and the wild animals they subsequently mixed with. No matter, for those involved in that and all the other works and efforts to re-establish otters, it's job done. For the many other residents of our waterways....the already endangered water voles, water birds, fish...in fact any living thing they can get their jaws round...it's job done as well...the end of the road (or river, to be pedantic
)So WHY should I be happy about that? WHY should I shrug and say 'hey ho, had to happen some time'....'Sh!t happens'...' It's just change/progress, get used to it'.....or any of those annoying platitudes. I probably WILL have to get used to it, because the law will not allow for anything else....but I'l be damned if I will pretend to be happy about it.....or be blinded by the politically motivated nonsense that brought it about. The particular chemicals that sped up the demise of otters have now been banned, otherwise they could not exist....but the fact that they are now back IN NO WAY proves, as the government would have the public believe, that our rivers and waterways in general are 'the cleanest they have ever been'. Otters are air breathing mammals, and as such are immune to the effects of many of the dissolved pollutants that blight our rivers. A few rivers are MUCH better now , but they are exceptions. In general, we are failing miserably to meet the EU guidelines (that were set with the agreement of our government) on improving the health and well-being of our rivers. If you think that the re-appearance of otters (something which is being held up by successive governments as proof of their 'good works' in that direction)...is a coincidence....then you may wish to think about the matter a little more. It may even cross your mind then....may give you cause to wonder at least....about the need for the astonishing and complicated...even draconian levels of protection otters now enjoy.
In my opinion, it's not rocket science, is it? (however much I hate that phrase
). Governments love a shining light to hold up, a beacon to prove the beauty and effectiveness of their efforts. The brighter that light is...the better....because it's very brightness will blind the public to any hidden agenda, any hidden small print, any cracks appearing in the infrastructure elsewhere. Works every time Cheers, Dave.
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