Into August and summer is almost over!  The forecasters do promise a rather better back end than we have had up to now and the past few days have given us the longest dry spell (5 days) that we have seen for months.  Despite the ground being fairly wet the river is falling quickly and is well past its best for good fishing on the runs and riffles.  It's a bit cloudier today with a light westerly breeze, but is appreciably warmer than it has been for most of July.

I went down to the hatchery yesterday and spent an hour or so raking the gravel in the spawning channel.  It's surprising how quickly the gravel has compacted, a consequence, I suppose, of the amount of silt that washed through when the pipe was first opened.  It's a lot more open and silt free now and the whole area is beginning to naturalise with plenty of cover along the channel and a good mix of native plants colonising the ground around the ponds.  I found a good way of preventing the disturbed sediment from washing into the main pond and this had the added bonus of significantly increasing the flow on the channel.  What was interesting as always was the amount of water in Brants Gill.  A rather better flow than the main river.

I saw a few very small rises whilst I worked so I'm hopeful that at least some of the fry that were put in a couple of weeks ago are still resident.  There was a lot of "anglers' curse" on the water which will supply quite a good source of food for these small fish.

I may take the sampling net down later to see how much riverfly life is present after disturbing the gravel.  It will give an indicator of how quickly the channel is colonised by invertebrates.  I suspect quite quickly>

Ian