Well, here we are the last day of the migratory trout season and after the rain that fell all day yesterday the river is high and fish should be on the move.  It's much brighter here at present with just the faintest glimmer of sun amongst some high broken cloud.  There is a lot of low and rather dense mist down in the valley, but this is slowly lifting and between the forecast showers it might not be a bad day.

Up at the Tarn yesterday morning there were a lot of rises to something I could not identify, but some of the takes were quite violent so the fish must have been pretty keen on whatever it was.  My guess is sedge, but I could be wrong.

I have seen no sign of cormorants for some weeks which is all to the good.  It's far too early to tell if they are becoming less of a problem and we need to keep up the effort to record sightings so that we have the evidence to convince Natural England that we need to move to more persuasive tactics if we get the numbers of resident birds that we saw last year.  They do seem to be leaving our stocked fish alone at present.

I met a couple of members of the syndicate who own Cam wood yesterday.  They tell me that the environmental impact assessment they are completing prior to their application to clear fell Cam woodland is almost ready.  I will be interested to see what this contains about impact on the Cam catchment and its implications for the Ribble as a whole.  We agreed to keep in touch so more no doubt on this in due course.  The hope is that once the trees that sit on the Cam feeder becks are gone there will be a noticeable balancing of low and spate water in the upper river.  Time will tell.

Ian