Right, let's see if we can return to some sense of normality.  I have just spent all day recovering as much data as I could from various back ups and stored programme files after my computer hard drive failed on Sunday.  I had just turned the machine on to write this weeks blog when everything froze and we then went into a boot loop where the PC continually restarts without ever loading windows.

The circuit board on the hard drive is apparently knackered, all the data is still tucked away on the disc, but it's no longer accessible.  There we go, a lesson to us all never to trust these damned machines and to always keep an up to date back up of all important files, settings and documents.

Enough of that, what of the fishery.  Well, we had a great morning last Saturday when 5 of us met Neil Handy at the Crown and walked the river down to Studfold looking for spawning salmon.  We only found 3, but we came away having learnt a great deal from Neil about the habits of spawning salmon on this river and his plans for their future encouragement.

The Hon Sec lent me a book by Carter Platts about  wild trout river management.  This was written in the 1930's and is a vast fund of practical advice about the nurture of wild brown trout and salmon.  There is nothing new under the sun.  Carter Platts was doing what we are trying to do now over 70 years ago.  His chapters on encouraging fly life on spate rivers are fascinating and his methods are well within the scope of the MAA to emulate.  In we are already doing much of the work that he extols.

All the trees have arrived so once I have agreed with the landowner where we can and can't plant I will arrange a working party to get them in.  Some are 8 ft saplings so will take a little more effort to plant than the usual slips, but they should have almost immediate impact next summer.

We also now have a stereo microscope which I found at a bargain price on ebay.  This will make the process of identifying riverfly families much easier for failing eyes and should enable us to readily separate out families with similar characteristics.  It should also enable us to identify very small specimens of the 9 families we are recording giving us a much more robust set of data.  It's a good instrument with top and base illumination and very clear optics that are surprisingly comfortable to use.

Barring any further disasters I will post an update on Sunday.

Ian

Sorry for the absence of a blog on Sunday, but the hard drive on my PC died on Sunday morning and I got the machine back with a new hard drive yesterday and am currently trying to rebuild about 4 years of work and records including email addresses and accounts.  If anyone is trying to contact me by email and not getting a reply please ring 01729 860394.

I will do a blog later today!

Ian