Predation in angling and other ramblings

Well as far as my angling goes it's all been a bit of a damp squib lately, in fact I haven't actually been going much, last week I only got out on Saturday and went tenching with the aftermath of my birthday the previous day leaving me a little tender! It didn't happen for me and from what I saw most of the others were struggling too although the two lads next to me fishing more carp style tactics did have a few tench during the day and had caught several more the previous night. The highlight of the day was watching the resident blackbird stuffing an incredible number of the maggots that I was flicking his way into his beak at once. In fact on one visit he was already carrying a worm and still managed to fit what I guessed to be at least twenty grubs in before flying off onto the no fishing bank to deliver them to his fledglings. As a rule I would have put money on my maggot feeders coming out ahead for tench as well as blackbirds but despite moving down into the neighbouring swim when the lads left I didn't get a touch. To be fair I should admit to falling asleep not long after moving so I can't claim to have fished that area very effectively, well you do only have one birthday a year don't you!

Despite moaning constantly at the lack of rain for as long as I can remember now that it has finally arrived I have completely changed tack and am sick of the sight of it, don't get me wrong it's wonderful to see the countryside so vibrant and lush and even better to see a river in full flood but the constant downpour's are playing havoc with my work as a self employed gardener. I guess the truth is that I have hardly been rained off for the last two years and so have forgotten what it's like but even so there has been enough rain almost every day to seriously affect how much I can do beyond what is normal, and as a result earn. I could say forget it, I won't even try to work tomorrow I'll just go fishing, but if I did and the weather picked up during the day I would have to call it quits and leave for work, I'm so far behind that I can't afford not to do so. It is all a bit catch 22, or "not catch" 22 in fact. And then to top it all off I have been suffering with the cold from hell, no, cold is not enough, this is full blown man flu. Her indoors reckons its just the poxy little cold that she had a couple of weeks back but it aint, this is ten times worse, they just don't understand do they? I could have fished yesterday in theory and the weather had actually let up with the wet stuff but I sat on the sofa on Friday night with my nose clogged up to its limit and sinus's pounding, a surprise bonus was that my hearing went a bit iffy too so if nothing else I got a bit of peace from the Mrs, every cloud has a silver lining eh, but no, I really didn't feel like angling or anything else much and so yet another day was mostly spent housebound.

Sunday saw the AGM of my local club, Loughborough Soar Angling Society, for which I act as bailiff. The good news is that membership has increased slightly in the past season, the bad is that it is still about 20% of what it was in its hay day. The club waters consist entirely of running water which is certainly a large factor in this seeing as in the past it was a well match fished venue and in turn attracted the pleasure anglers too, today the majority of match lads fish the commercials and without a doubt so do many pleasure anglers, no need to walk far, secure car parking and heavily stocked waters hold great appeal to a lot of people. To be honest I would find it incredibly boring to do the same thing week in week out and I think that they are missing out massively but unless you can persuade them to try the rivers they will never know and that is no easy task. The river is now in most parts much more suited to the specialist angler than matches, silting up has allowed reeds to clog large stretches and reduced the number of swims suitable for match pegging greatly and gradually access and parking has become more of an issue. However the rewards are still there, I see few anglers fishing for smaller stuff on my travels but quite often the ones that I do meet are catching well and it seems that at long last the roach are starting to appear again despite the predation that they suffer.

The subject of cormorants came up at the meeting and I was shocked to hear quite a few people say that they didn't think that there were any on our waters! Really? Blimey it is a rare day that I walk the Soar and don't see the "black death" somewhere or other, I was surprised yet again when most present didn't know that a website exists where us anglers can report cormorant and goosander sightings in order to build up information for use in trying to tackle this issue by the Angling Trust. It's easy to forget to forget to use the site I admit and I guess plenty of people also think that it is a pointless task but it isn't, any information that we can gain to help our cause is valuable and we really should push the matter, if you aren't aware of Cormorant Watch here's a link, please use it and also spread the word. You might be a carp angler and think that cormorants aren't an issue for you but think again, anything that helps to deplete fish stocks of any size is also making it more difficult for otters to find food and we all know what happens then, they move on to our stillwaters, think on, we as anglers are in trouble and need to get our act together.

So then we come to the otters, what the hell do we do about that then? Tim Paisley of the Predation Action Group has written an excellent piece in this months Coarse Angling Today on the subject and raises a very good point. A standard line of thinking is that otters are cute, cuddly creatures that the general public relate to due to the film Tarka the Otter and that we have to tread very carefully about what we as anglers suggest may be done to control their numbers, however Bambi also made deer into cute, cuddly creatures that the public love and we cull those when required without a great public outrage don't we. He also raises the point that the RSPB has constructed an otter proof fence around one of its reserves and that the population of breeding waders present has since increased by over 80%, I would imagine that otter proof also equals fox proof though wether the birds previously suffered much fox predation is not clear but nevertheless that fence was constructed for a reason wasn't it. I think we need to stop being quite so nicey nicey about this and start to educate the public on what is actually happening out there, BBC's Countryfile ran a piece on the subject of bird predation recently which was good to see so there is hope, lets hope we can swing general opinion without shooting ourselves in the foot.