Fantastic news reached me by email on Thursday.  Our application to the Yorkshire Dales Millennium Trust for grant funding of the habitat work at Cam Beck has been approved.  We can now move quickly to begin work on the ground in early November and I will report progress weekly through this blog.  This is a great opportunity for the club to show what it can do to be a more proactive steward of the fishery.  We will learn much and no doubt make a few mistakes along the way but, hopefully, these will be few.  The area for those who don't know it well, is a lovely peaceful spot which will really benefit from some protection and care.  I have updated the MAA website and will upload the new page on this project later today.

What a foul day we had yesterday.  It rained all day with a stiff north westerly wind blowing a large volume of water into every nook and cranny.  The river is running high and coloured this morning but should clear quickly as we have a lovely bright, sunny start with just a wisp of cloud here and there.  Just right for a final fling before the season closes on Tuesday.

I promised a bit of a retrospective in this posting since we are within a couple of days of the season's end.  Looking back to March I really do wonder where the time has gone but much has been achieved on the fishery this season despite some pretty grim conditions through the summer.  It all started quite badly with a wet and bitterly cold spring which inflicted great hardship on the lambing ewes and resulted in a high mortality of both indoor and outdoor born lambs.  This also had an impact on fishing as conditions were far from ideal early on.

Then it all changed in May and we switched quite suddenly to hot, dry and windless conditions that, by the end of July, had brought a drought to the river which made fishing practically impossible.  Fish were lethargic and remained mostly hidden in the deep pools.  Regular walks along the bank failed to show any signs of life at all and I began to wonder if the river would recover once the rains eventually came.  Another learning experience for me because as soon as the weather broke at the beginning of August back came the fish in good numbers.  The river seemed full of young native trout all about a half to three quarters of a pound in weight, fighting fit and seemingly none the worse for their confinement in small pools that reached bath water temperatures during July.

It all goes to show just how resilient wildlife can be provided that adverse conditions don't persist for too long.

The settled weather gave Phil Sutcliffe good conditions to start work on Neil Handy's plans for the old MAA hatchery and work moved on apace to refurbish three of the old tanks to provide a crayfish refuge and large stew pond for breeding native trout.  Work here continues with the installation of the off line spawning channels which will encourage both brown and sea trout to build redds in ideal conditions for a good fry survival.

The Tarn suffered towards the back end because the high temperatures and low rainfall provided ideal conditions for algae and weed growth.  Conditions are returning to normal now and will be helped along with a judicious application of barley straw later this week.  Wildlife on the Tarn suffered some early setbacks.  The swans who have lived here for years always struggle to bring a full brood of cygnets to maturity but this year was a disaster for them as they lost all seven hatchlings within weeks of leaving the nest.  I know not what takes them but suspect Mr fox is to blame.  Next year I plan to make a few night time visits to the Tarn to see if I can pin down the culprit.

The season has ended on a high note with plenty of water since August bringing a good crop of salmon up to Horton and beyond.  It will be interesting to see what sort of redd count we get this winter.  My guess is that it will be significantly greater than last year with it's dry back end.  Anecdotal evidence suggests that salmon fishing has been rewarding this autumn which in some way will help to compensate for the dearth of good fishing during the spring and summer.

What makes this job so absorbing is the fact that you are constantly learning something new. It doesn't matter how many books you read about the practise and art of river keeping nothing can beat practical experience and observation.  All rivers are different and each river differs in conditions over quite short lengths.  Every year brings its own challenges, surprises, delights and despairs and you realise quite quickly that a lifetime is too short to learn all there is to know about the way the river and its wild life work.  All you can hope to do is grasp the basics that enable you to make a positive contribution to the life of this fantastic river.

So, we enter the closed season with a sense of relief that conditions on the fishery seem to have suffered no lasting damage and an eager of anticipation about our ambitious plans for Cam Beck.  There is much to look forward to and a lot to do before lines are cast again next March.

See you next week.

Ian