Keith Arthur’s
It’s the main reason why sport is getting better and better
review of the year
IT’S that time of year when I like to look back at what has happened and look forward to what might.
To kick off, all stillwater fisheries are managed in one way or another, and fishery managers do their stuff, but who looks after the rivers? From a water-quality perspective it’s the EA and water companies.
Largely due to pressure from anglers via the Angling Trust, these bodies have cleaned up their act pretty well. Gradually they are eradicating pollution. The major concern now is farmers polluting via slurry or silage or abstracting for trickle-irrigation.
All that aside, rivers have fished better than at any time in my experience.
Bouncing back
Over the years all the major rivers have been declared dead or dying, washed up and finished, but they have all bounced back in different ways. I do feel for some anglers who target just one species, especially barbel. Because of poor spawning recruitment, mostly caused by lack of water, or predation of the few large specimens their favourite rivers held, sport may have suffered.
However, anglers targeting other species have caught barbel from under 1lb to 4lb. There are certainly more in this size bracket on the Thames than I have ever known.
As for chub, from what I have been told by plenty of people on the Thames and its tributaries, the Trent, Great Ouse and Avons (Warks and Hants) there are lots of chub from a couple of ounces - two or three-year-old fish – to a couple of pounds. A great sign.
Similarly, numbers of big perch seemed to be in decline but this autumn has, so far, produced what seems to be a host of ‘new’ 2lb-plus fish. With perch growing far more rapidly than silver fish, and with what appears to be a host of fry for them to feast on, perch sport appears to be safe.
Just a few years ago, on many of our rivers, bream approaching and occasionally in excess of 10lb could be caught in numbers. Now, while many of those big bream have departed to the big river in the sky, their progeny are doing very nicely. Catches of fish from hand size to 2lb-plus are now made regularly.
Roach, for so long the most popular fish in the UK but now superseded by carp, are once again the river angler’s staple. There are fish of all sizes and many year classes waiting for the angler who targets them.
Fish up to a pound can readily be caught on conventional float tactics with maggots, hemp, tares or the ‘new big thing’ urid beans (thanks to Brijpal Singh for that one). Now winter is here that will change to bread or, bizarrely on some rivers, hemp, and with so many fish I can’t see a roach problem at any time in the near future. Big, often uncaught fish seem to be hiding everywhere.
I’ve personally witnessed 2lb-plus roach from my local tidal Thames and know from pals that the Trent, Severn and Great Ouse have produced them too. I don’t know of many caught by accident but those prepared to wait for bites and – if they’re really lucky and on the right river – avoid the barbel, carp and bream, these roach are waiting to be caught.
In fact I can’t wait for some rain (the South East has once again been more like the Sahara as far as rainfall goes) so I can try to find the big roach now the water has turned cold. They are holed up somewhere! Apart from gudgeon – which
“All the major rivers, declared dead or dying, have bounced back in different ways”
have been missing for years – and dace, I’d say everything in the river is rosy and as both of those species are short-lived it could just be, yet another, temporary blip. Just one missing year class can make a big difference.
Of course, it could just be that no-one fishes for them, and the styles now used to catch all those roach and skimmers don’t suit ‘gonks’ or dace... who knows?
Keep the closed season!
So, that’s the year gone, what about the one to come? As they say:“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
I genuinely believe that the main reason for the continued improvement in our river fishing is the fact that we have a closed season to protect fish while they are spawning.
We know that roach, bream and chub will, 99 per cent of the time, spawn within the statutory three-month break. We also know that, more often than not, barbel don’t.
Before barbel became a ‘rockand-roll’ species they were fished for in autumn, between roach and chub times. Now dedicated anglers fish for them all year. Has that impacted on their ability to reproduce sufficiently? I don’t think it has, but we can never know for sure.
Everything about our sport is based on hope and assumption.
So, what is my hope for the year ahead? Simply that all those anglers who want the closed season abolished or changed, purely to satisfy their own selfish ends, think long and hard because it sure as hell won’t do the fish any favours.
We used to hang up our kit for three months and enjoy it all the more when we could fish again. So please, whatever happens, protect the only fish that need protection – the natural, irreplaceable species swimming in our rivers. The future of big Thames perch seems secure.