DES TAYLOR
Walking the banks will help deter predators
“We must protect the rivers”
SO THE river season is over for another year, and our running water venues will be left alone again, with hardly an angler to be seen on the bank.
Now I know that’s always the case come March 14, but this year’s closure follows two months of lockdown when predators such as goosanders, cormorants, otters and mink have been having a field day on our venues, feeding on fish stocks and wildlife. Only last week I returned after lockdown to a carp water, only to find 17 dead big carp where they’d been pulled up the bank by otters and the remains left for the rats.
This will have been happening on our rivers too, and what really worries me is that although the virus lockdown is coming to an end, our rivers face another lockdown in the shape of the closed season.
I know there’s no way we’ll be able to get the closed season opened up this year to save our fish, so it’s up to us to protect them. The only way we can do this is to get out there and walk the banks as much as possible during the shutdown.
We should still be following Covid-19 lockdown measures, but many of our rivers are at a tipping point with their stocks of barbel, pike and chub.
This closed season could see predation tip them over the edge, with a lot fewer specimen fish left for us to fish for when rivers reopen.
Every club or syndicate that runs a stretch of river needs to act and bailiffs – especially guys who are out of work or retired – should have their petrol money paid to get out there every day. We should also have more river work parties than usual. This would let predators know that humans are about.
If you’re allowed on to the water after dark, do night patrols. Three or four anglers walking the bank with torches and talking loudly will help, and dawn is the time to scare off cormorants and goosanders.
Just before the end of the season I spent my first day on the river for a number of weeks and spotted two mink. I didn’t see any cormorants, but I witnessed at least 20 goosanders flying up and down the stretch, and saw numerous swims with otter prints in them.
It’s no good hiding our heads in the sand. It’s obvious that this is going to be a problem on rivers and we need to act now – and I mean at this very minute.
There’s a big campaign being run by the Barbel Society highlighting otter predation on barbel at the moment. Some anglers have said this predation is only natural, especially on waters where barbel are native, but when they’ve eaten all the barbel, otters won’t go over to lettuce. Instead, they’ll eat the next size of fish down the chain – a fish that might affect you much more.
The next three months are a worrying time for our river fish, and it’s up to all of us to do whatever we can legally to protect them.