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River Ribble - Stocking questions

L

Les Watts

Member
The history of the first Ribble Barbel is vague to say the least.
Legend has it that the river was stocked near the M6 Tickled Trout junction with fish illegally moved from the Severn by local anglers in the early/mid 1970's.....and that seems to be it!
I for one am curious to know a little more if possible - although for obvious reasons the anonymity of any anglers who might have been involved should be respected.
I'd certainly be interested to hear answers to any of the following questions - if there is anyone who has some history that they could share:
  • Approximately how many fish were stocked and when?
  • Were they all stocked as "small" fish?
  • Did they all come from the Severn (and/or its tributaries) or were any fish moved from any of the Yorkshire rivers for example?
  • How many anglers were moving fish? Was it just a small group of friends or were there numbers of anglers acting independently?
  • Were any fish released anywhere other than near the M6 junction?
  • How quickly did the fish move up and down the river and when did the first Ribble-bred fish appear?
  • Has there ever been any legal stockings since this time?
 
I've come across this before (it dates back to 2013).
However the intro doesn't really add much to the basic "legend" referred to in the OP.
The original Ribble stockings would be nearly 50 years ago now and all the original fish will be long gone - and probably some of the anglers involved too!
The stocking of other rivers such as the Stour/Hampshire Avon and Severn are on public record - it's a shame we know so little about the Ribble.
 
one of the legal stocking had blue dots on the under belly must have been 30 plus years ago .used to fish the northern anglers top of balderstone in the pool you could catch lots of 12 inch fish in a sesion on maggot
 
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Quite a few of the older Swale match anglers tell tales of Lancashire lads helping barbel to walk across the Pennines via the A59.
 
As Garry states there were a lot of small fish on the Northern Anglers stretch at Balderstone many of them had blue spot on their bellies.
 
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