From time to time I get rumours and reports of otters in the Ribble catchment.  These are usually just glimpses of fast retreating animals or, in one case, the corpse of a female that seemed to have died of natural causes.  It's been some time since the last sighting and I was beginning to think that the sightings we had were just animals in transit which had stopped transiting!

Then Ian W stopped by yesterday after fishing the Tarn to ask if I had received his email.  I had to confess that either I had not or the system had helpfully dumped it in the junk email folder (thanks Mr Gates).  What Ian wanted to tell me was that a couple of weeks ago whilst fishing the Tarn he came across what looked like an otter spraint near the path that leads around the reed bed at the top of the Tarn.  This was far too big for a mink spraint, was fresh and contained crayfish remains and fish scales. This seems to indicate that otters are still around up here on the Ribble.  A conversation I had with Neil H a few months ago leads me to believe that there is a much larger population of otters on the Ribble that we have evidence for and is yet another indicator of the health and productivity of this catchment. 

I asked Ian how the fishing was yesterday and his response was "Too easy".  Apparently he had caught his quota in about an hour and a half so despite the predation of the cormorants (and the otter) we are entering the back end of the season with the Tarn fishing at its best with plenty of stock to see us through to the end.

It's a return to fine, dry and settled conditions here this morning after 24 hours of cloud and rain. Yet again we have a river that's annoyingly just right for trout, but too low for salmon.  I guess the trout are laughing.

Ian