It's a grand start to April, a wee bit cloudy, but quite warm and the promise of much sun as the morning advances.  There is virtually no wind and the river still has good water although the level is falling quite quickly.

The Tarn seems to be fishing well after the recent stocking with most visits resulting in good catches.  There have been some small hatches of sedge over the past couple of days so fish are beginning to rise freely to take advantage of this source of food.

Paul B called in yesterday afternoon with Emma the local EA ecologist.  We now have  a provisional start date of 20 April for the crayfish plague eradication project which hopefully will lead to the reintroduction of native crayfish later in due course.  It will be interesting to see what results are obtained from the electrofishing programme planned for this summer.  The timing is perfect as it will give a baseline result for fish distribution and ages in a river sans crayfish against which we can compare results for future years when hopefully native crayfish will be present.  It should then be possible to measure to some extent the part that crayfish play in promoting the presence of larger fish and perhaps the overall recruitment of wild trout.  It may be that trout recruitment will show a slight drop initially as crayfish are likely to predate on fish eggs and alevins, but in short order a natural balance should be achieved.  There may well be an impact on invertebrates, but on the evidence from the Tarn with it's massive hatches of sedge, damsel flies and caenis despite a very large population of crayfish this impact is almost certain to be minimal.  Much food for thought here.

Finally, news does reach me on this day that the EA are contemplating a flood relief project for Settle which will involve diverting the Ribble at Helwith Bridge back to its old pre glaciation course to flow down through Wharfe and Austwick to join the course of the Wenning.  Just as well for Settle Anglers' that they own fishing on the Wenning!

Ian