What a cracking day we had yesterday.  The weather lived up to all early expectations and gave us a warm day with wall to wall sunshine.  A bit too bright for good fishing which was a bit of a disappointment for those members who decided to arrive at Horton early for the supper and go after a salmon on the river.  Still, the supper seemed to be a great success with at least 40 of us sitting down to a real trencherman's meal of pie and peas followed by one of the best apple pies I have tasted for some time.  Sandra did us proud and thanks are due to her and the team at the Crown for making the evening such an enjoyable one.  It was good to see so many farmers there all enjoying a crack and this time a good few brought their wives and girlfriends as did a lot of members so the mixed company added to the really great atmosphere.

This event now seems to be going from strength to strength after a bit of a relapse a few years ago.  Long may it continue.

I got an email yesterday from Andrew Rushforth whose wife runs the Horton Post Office giving a link to some photographs that his friend had taken of salmon leaping the Foss.  These are the best pictures of leaping salmon I have ever seen and were eagerly passed around when I showed them at the supper last night.  I have asked permission to post these up on this blog so watch out over the next couple of days for some really stunning pictures of autumn salmon.

I promise faithfully to stop banging on about DEFRA, honest, but I can't let the latest report of the impact of their budget cuts go by without comment.  The Telegraph reports a statement by David Milliband the Environment Secretary in which he expresses his "regret" about the cuts which have left Natural England with a ban on any conservation project costing over £5,000.  It seems that some £12.9m has been cut from the conservation and wildlife budget for this year as a consequence of DEFRA's £200m black hole which was caused by it's incompetent administration of the Single Farm Payment scheme.  You don't get much in the way of conservation work for £5k as I know too well from costing the limited amount of fencing and habitat work we are trying to do at Nanny Carr's so this is hardly the well funded flying start that the new Agency deserves and is a reflection of the low priority this government places on wildlife and countryside issues.

Ah well, there is better news in the Craven Herald which reports that the Environment Agency is to crack down on illegal crayfish trappers operating in the Dales.  Traps don't discriminate between American signal and native white clawed crayfish and it's illegal to trap any crayfish without a licence.  These are rarely granted for waters known to contain native species.  Even better news is that Tarmac are to create a crayfish refuge at Threshfied Quarry if they get the go ahead to continue extracting at Swinden Quarry.  It will be interesting to see how they get on and how their efforts compare to Neil Handy's new facility at the old Horton hatchery.  I'll try to keep tabs on this one.

Finally the president (Geoff Bains) reports that he got a fine salmon in unpromising conditions a couple of days ago at the Pipe Pool.  They really have been coming up fit and in some numbers this year so fingers crossed for a good spawning and plenty of smolts in the future.

That's probably quite enough for this morning .  I'll post an update tomorrow then switch to a posting at least every Sunday during the close season.

Ian