We cleared down the crayfish traps at the Tarn yesterday morning and found an exceptional haul of animals.  The perceived wisdom is that a single crayfish per trap indicates a location with a thriving population.  We got an average of 23 creatures per trap with one trap holding 50 white claws.  This early result suggests that the Tarn may well be the best native crayfish site anywhere in the UK, 

We recorded and numbered each creature checking for disease and any other indicator that problems may be building in the population.  Only two of the 230 animals processed showed signs of white porcelain disease.  Again the rule of thumb is that a 10% rate of infection is accepted as normal so our population is not only exceptinally large it's also seems to be exceptionally healthy. 

There are still 5 days of the study left to run so these are just preliminary findings.  The traps were reset yesterday and will be cleared down again today.  It will be interesting to see how much of the catch consists of re caught animals and how many are fresh catch.  The numbers will tell us and the numbers will also show how mobile the population is as we can relate each numbered creature to the location where it was originally and subsequently caught.

Do look out for numbered crayfish when fishing the Tarn.  Crayfish bingo is always an option to help pass those tedious hours when the trout are not cooperating.

Despite some rain yesterday the river is still too low for decent fishing and with high pressure forecast to build again over the next few days it's doubtful if there will be much decent water before the end of the trouting season next week.

Ian