A very wet day yesterday brought the river back up to full flood last night.  It's dropped during the day despite a few showers and provided that we get no significant rain overnight it should be fishable tomorrow.  Be warned though, the forecast is for a wet week so it's going to be pot luck as to whether you find decent conditions if you plan to fish at Horton over the next few days.

A short while ago I was standing in my back kitchen contemplating the absence of view across the valley when a large raptor landed on a fence post beyond the lane.  Even with binoculars I failed to get a positive identification even though the bird was less than 10 yards away.  It looked like a large hawk with a speckled brown breast an long curved wings.  Too small for a buzzard and too large (and the wrong colour) for a sparrow hawk.  It has me puzzled.

All this precipitation has rather put paid to the regular draw down of the crayfish excluder ponds at Ling Ghyll.  Unless we get an unforeseen anticyclone before early October then I think the plan is to remove the pump and close down the site for the duration of the winter.  Some creatures will inevitably have gone over the falls in all this high water, but the numbers will have been significantly diminished by the presence of the dams.  So there is no real problem.  Next spring everything will be in place for an early start to the programme and given some decent weather a long summer schedule of draw downs should see all traces of plague removed from the river.

Ian