Well, here we are into the last couple of months of the season and autumn is not too far away.  It seems no time at all since I was last writing about my favourite time of year and looking back on a dry, hot summer.  Not so this year.  I was staggering around up on Greenfield Knot yesterday looking for a suitable site to put a wireless repeater so that the communities at High and Low Greenfield can benefit from our wireless Internet network.  After about half an hour of pacing the fells we found a spot where you can see both communities as well as the site where the signal will feed from at Selside.  Not only that, but this spot is only 50 yards from a substantial electric fence which we can tap into for a power supply.  All part of ensuring that our remote rural communities can join the interconnected world and remain economically viable.

The weather did brighten during the late morning and that improvement has lasted through to today with a few sunny spells breaking through some heavy cloud.  The mizzle that fell early yesterday did nothing to lift the river so fishing conditions are still not good.

I got a very interesting response to my musings about weed on the Tarn which would indicate that this is a perennial problem and my initial thoughts that sensitive and judicious hand clearance of selected areas may be the best course of action.  Here is David's reminiscence.

Ian

I wish I knew the answer!!!!!  In the late 1940s to the late 1960s (when they killed off all the weed) it was considered that if there was weed then it was healthy wild fishery, members were complaining all the time when the weed appeared.
The compromise was to to cut certain areas along the weed beds so that when casting from the bank there were inlets of clear water where casting could be done without entanglement in the weed. These were always good places to fish (for those that knew) since fish would come browsing the edge of the weed in the clear water looking for food. The fun (and the complaints) started when you hooked a fish for the fish usually dived into the weed and it took a skilled fisherman to persuade it to come out  (there were techniques that worked the first being to fish only one fly)  Many less skilled anglers would complain more about losing hooked fish in the weed than about the actual weed.
I used to weed these clear bays from the boat using a long handled rake which seemed to pull the weeds up by the roots (or nearly so) the weed was then put in the shallows or just on the bank in the hope that the wild life would somehow get back into the water.
I can not recall the weed growing too severely after it had been removed; although the next season it was all back. to me that was a good thing!!
In general there were three main types of weeds a flat leafed thing whose leaves lay on top of the water and in season had nice flowers. The main bed of this was near the duck wall, and there were small patches near the SE corner. The area south of the wall going under the tarn was mainly Canadian Pond weed. This was cut from time time to time. The main weed grew in banks at each side of the tarn and extended into the water, aggravatingly, just further than a cast could be made in those days.
From a tender age I used to row the boat for aged members so that they could fish the other side of these weed banks and even on a "slow" day they always managed some sport as they cast along the edge of these banks of weeds from the boat.   It was not all bad!!!

I never found a solution to weed, I suppose compromise is the best remedy. In the end a "healthy" water must come first although if you have no members then the exercise becomes a bit futile.
David

Thanks David for some typically thoughtful and sensible reflections.  The main problem these days is Canadian pond weed and raking out bays to provide some clear water would seem a good way of tackling the problem.

Ian