I thought a trip down to the hatchery this morning would be in order since I haven't been there since just before Christmas and the weather here at the moment is fairly benign. I had a good look round, but can see no strong evidence of trout redds yet in the spawning channel.  The water is running high and clear and all looks healthy with no signs of damage after the recent floods.  What we do have a lot of is rununculus which is starting to block the channel just below the lower pond.  It's good to see how well this plant is colonising here and the surplus will be welcome as it offers me the chance to try transplanting a few clumps in sheltered pockets along the river.  This should help to provide cover for gammerids and snails which will add to the larger prey species vital for our larger fish.  Whether the transplants will be successful remains to be seen, but progress only comes through experiment and by carefully selecting the sites, anchoring the plants in hessian bags secured well down in the gravel I just might achieve some success.

I wrote last year about trying to establish a cress bed in which to breed water snails and gammerids and this prompted a warning from Gavin P who reminded me about the problems experienced on a particular southern river which is fed by the run off from the vitacress farm.  I can't remember the details of this, but I have a suspicion that the problems were due to the amount of nutrient being washed out of the beds since this commercial operation is in the habit of feeding the crop to increase production.  Where small scale organic methods are practised the problems seem not to occur and if the evidence of our crop of rununculus is anything to go by conditions are such that a worthwhile crop of cress can be obtained naturally and without much human interference.  In fact it would seem best to work with nature here and encourage the rununculus to grow in one of the remaining redundant ponds which already has a good few inches of water in the bottom.  A mix of rununculus and cress should provide an ideal snail habitat.  I must talk to Neil.

Ian