We awake to a rather damp morning here at Horton.  It's now raining fairly steadily and if this continues for a few hours as it shows every sign of so doing the river should rise a bit.  Whether it will be enough to bring the salmon up only time will tell.  I'll keep you posted.

I was looking again at the bundle of papers I got from the RFA on Tuesday.  There really is some useful stuff here and it serves to illustrate how important this co-ordinating body is in bringing together all those involved with managing the Ribble and its fishing from source to sea.

There is a note from the Hodder Consultative about the work being done by Jonathan Hoyle and funded by the Environment Agency to study the survival and movement of stocked brown trout.  I will quote from this as the findings so far seem to be consistent with anecdotal evidence up here.

Brownies were introduced into several sites on the Hodder and all dye marked with marks unique to the club stocking the fish.  The survey in 2005 involved eight Associations, four of which offered their trout to be dye marked.

This survey has had very limited support.  Returns have been received from 7 Associations from which 39 anglers submitted a return.  The results suggest that the majority of fish remain in the area in which they have been stocked.  Only 3% moved any significant distance upstream or downstream and no dye marked fish were caught below Lower Hodder Bridge.

The survey continues this season with two more Associations participating and it will be interesting to see the results in due course.  What this suggests to me so far is that we need to think very carefully about where we put stock fish in future, recognising that where they are put they are likely to out compete any resident natives by stint of sheer numbers alone.  And what are they all feeding on?  Young trout??

I had an email this morning asking what was causing the discolouration of the water at the Tarn.  The short answer is - I don't know.  It's either some form of microphyte (the opinion of Paul Bradley our tame ecologist) or suspended organic material washed out of the feeder springs after the severe drought. Whilst it does not seem to be having and adverse effect on the resident fish it does seem to be suppressing their inclination to rise possibly because their vision is impaired by the rather murky water.  I intend to investigate further and will report back.

Ian