I spent a fascinating morning yesterday helping the Ribble Catchment Conservation Trust to do an electrofishing survey of Brants Ghyll.  This was a full qualitative survey unlike the five minute quantitative survey that we did here last autumn.  First we set a couple of stop nets 30 meters apart to define the survey area.  Then the area within the nets was fished from top to bottom. This took about three quarters of an hour and produced a fair bucket full of fish.  Whilst we waited for the escapees to settle down and take up station the catch was processed.  The result was a very healthy population of trout and salmon parr together with a reasonable number of trout and salmon fry.

We also got quite a haul of bull heads which I know from my riverfly work are common in the river and about a dozen very large stone loach.

After placing this processed catch into an aerated bin we did two upstream passes with the gear to ensure that the area had been entirely swept of fish.  These produced a further small haul of parr and fry and a handful of bullhead and loach.

The health of a salmonid population is judged by reference to a standard measure and what we have in Brants Ghyll is a category borderline B/C population where category A is the highest.  This compares to a D category last season so it looks as though both salmon and brown trout are recruiting well in Brants Ghyll.

We will shift our attention to the main river on Monday and take a look at a riffle sequence above the Austin's pools between New Inn and Newhouses.

I then went up to the Tarn to give Paul a hand with the day's crayfish recording.  We now have a catch of around seven hundred creatures most of which have only come once into the traps.  So by Sunday we should have over nine hundred which leaves no doubt that the Tarn is likely to be the healthiest population of native crayfish in the UK.  Just out of curiosity I set two traps right out in the middle of the Tarn.  In the past only the margins have ever been trapped so we thought why not?  let's see what a couple of deep water traps turn up.  I will check these later this morning.  We may get nothing, but who knows.

If you are visiting the Tarn over the next few days please be aware that the boathouse door is parting company with the rest of the boat house and taking the support with it.  A repair is a three man job at least so this will have to wait until we can get a small working party to the Tarn, get the door off, repair the door post and rehang the door.  In the meantime please do be careful if you are taking out the boat.  The door is extremely heavy and should be treated with great caution.

Ian

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