It's a strange sort of morning, grey and overcast with a light southerly breeze, but there are brighter spells when the sun breaks through briefly.  So it's difficult to predict what conditions will be like later.  What is certain is that the river is pretty low again.  It's fishable in the pools but there is much less water on the runs and riffles. The rain promised yesterday did not materialise, in fact to all intents and purposes it seemed an ideal fishing day.  This was not the case.  The Tuesday Boys reported a blank day - not only on the river but the Tarn also.  Things may have picked up late on because Roy Morris got two rainbows at the Tarn late on so there was probably an evening rise.  The mind of fishes -eh?

I went along to the Ribble Fisheries Association meeting last night and this proved to be a very worthwhile event even though I could only stay for an hour.  My long experience of meetings both in business and recreational is that they are often events when one loses the will to live quite early on .  Emphatically not the case here.  Discussion was informed, lively, succinct and very tightly controlled by an exemplary chairman in David Hinks, an MAA member.

Whilst I was there we looked at a range of topics from pollution to cormorants, sabs to habitat restoration and I came away with a bundle of documents which I will refer back to in this blog over the next few days.

I did a brief spiel on our plans for the fishery at Horton focusing on habitat improvement and reduced re-stocking .  I outlined very briefly the Hatchery project that Neil Handy has brought to fruition, but asked those present to be circumspect in how they reported this as the site is on private land and is experimental.  They seemed interested and quite pleased to have someone from the upper river present.

There seem to be two main themes in the reports from the Associations lower down the river.  Cormorants and pollution.  The first of these we know only too well from their annual winter holidays feasting at the Tarn.  It seems that despite assurances to the contrary from Ben Bradshaw the minister responsible it is proving less than straightforward to obtain from DEFRA the necessary licenses to shoot these predators.  Each cormorant eats up to 25lb of fish a day and in some places they can be counted in the dozens.  We probably get off fairly lightly with our 5 or 6 at the Tarn. 

We are also fortunate that our fishery is mostly distant from main roads and river crossings and farming here is almost entirely pastoral so pollution is currently not a big issue, but vigilance is called for and any member who spots anything unusual should ring me so that we can investigate further.

That's quite enough for this morning.  I will pick up some other topics from the meeting tomorrow.

Ian