With water levels too low for decent fishing the season has rather fizzled out and the final day tomorrow is hardly worth the effort. 

I did the invertebrate check at Turn Dub yesterday in some bright, warm sunshine.  The river was crystal clear and flowing strongly over the riffles just below the Turn Dub inlet.  The results for this site were once again very similar to last October with a good number of gammarus and a lot of very small cased caddis.  The kick close to the bank turned up a couple of surprised looking bull heads.  It's important to get these little fish out of the sample quickly because they can play havoc with the results of a sample by eating any invertebrate that wanders within reach.  I learnt this to my cost in the very early days of sampling when I left a very large bullhead in the sample tray and then wondered why a seemingly good haul of mixed invertebrates was diminishing as I counted them. 

Long term readers of this blog will recall that a couple of years ago we planted a lot of saplings between Turn Dub and the top of the fenced run just above where the Pennine Bridleway will cross the river.  Most of the hawthorns have taken, but we had less luck with the ash that went in here.  The Woodland Trust contacted me last week and came to visit last Friday.  I have now submitted an application to them to complement the planting we did in this fenced area with a thousand mature saplings.  At the same time we will repair the fence at the foot of the Tarn and put some native hardwood trees in the wildlife area.  The beauty of this scheme is that the Trust provide not only the trees, but also the guards, stakes and labour to put the whole lot in.  Once again we will be planting in pockets and groups so as to leave plenty of casting room and avoid creating an unnatural sylvan corridor.  Our hope is that these trees will mature to provide good cover for young brown trout.  Some willows will be put in right on the bankside so that their roots create ideal homes for mature trout.  It will take a few years, but you have to start somewhere.

I was recently sent a wonderful account of habitat improvement carried out on the Wharfe over a hundred years ago  They were trying to do then what we have recently rediscovered and improve habitat by planting trees and sowing wild flower seeds to encourage the recruitment of river flies.  I will shortly post this up on the club website along with a great deal of other material that has recently been sent to me.

Ian