The East Lothian Angling Association arranged for some electro-fishing on the River Tyne today - expertly done by a team from the Clyde Foundation. A perfect early autumn day, 20 degrees and a clear blue sky and the river at a good height. Throughout the day we caught trout, salmon, eels (lots of eels at the site nearest the tide) brook lamprey, stone loach, minnow and stickleback.

The real surprise though was this inauspicious stretch of headwater, up at the old mining area around Ormiston. In a stretch about 4' wide and mostly about 12" deep, from here:



to here, which is no more than about 30 yds:



we got over 120 fish including trout like this:



and this:



quite amazing biomass of trout for such a short and apparently featureless and coverless bit of water. Most of the fish were under the banks or the shelter provided by stuff like this:

it always amazes me WHY clubs go through with this. it does do harm to lies etc, this has been well proven.

gus

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gus

We do it because we want to know about the population of wild trout in the river. We want to know about the population wild trout in the river so that we know what effect changes in the way we manage the river have on the native population. Without this information most of what we do will be based on guesswork.

You could let me know please where it is "well proven" that electro-fishing is damaging.

hi mate

it's not so much of the elecrto that does the damage it's 3 15 stone blokes wading through a 5 foot wide river that does all the harm. would you wade this wee river if you were fishing it. i think not. anyway i see your point of wanting to know population etc but do you think it would be wise to mess up spawning grounds in this way. you are effecting change by roaming through a small river like this, let nature take it's course.

gus

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gus

Two blokes and a girl actually.

None of the fish we caught today were anywhere near spawning - which was surprising in itself. I think the info we get from a survey of a few 30m stretches out of 25 miles of river is worth the minimal damage to the river bottom from wading it.

Couple of points need to be addressed here. Electro-fishing surveys are used all over the place by fisheries biologists who, I suspect, wouldn't do it if it was "well-proven" that they caused harm.

Unfortunately letting nature take its course only really works where man has had no other influence. This is a small river that is affected by unnatural mining pollution, agricultural run-off, eutrophication and abstraction. I'm not aware of the WTT criticising the use of electro-fishing as a part of a wider strategy to improve wild trout populations and their habitat so until I hear further what damage can be done by its use then I'm more than happy to see it continue.


Secondly, I probably would wade up the stream if I was fishing it. But then I'm just plain bad!

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resist much, obey little

Walt Whitman

Electro fishing has to be done carefullly by skilled operators. If not it can lead to deformed fish with dislocated vertebrae and dead fish when it was not intended. It is a case of balancing the pro and the con. Pro is the much more certain knowledge of what, where and how many. Con is the risk of injury and death to the fish. I think the upper of the two pictures of trout shows a live trout that looks as though it will survive its ordeal. I'm not so sure about the trout in the lower picture...

richard

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Who resides on the right bank of the Derbyshire Wye and is lulled to sleep each night by the mutterings of a weir, dreaming that "When the rivers and their inhabitants come first, we ALL win..."

Richard,

I witnessed every stage of yesterday's activities and I can assure you that all those fish survived. After capture, they were carefully anaethetised before being they were measured and, where appropriate, scale samples were taken. The fish were then given time to fully recover before being released.

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resist much, obey little

Walt Whitman

I watched a sequence in Iolo's Welsh Safari this week where the EA were electro fishing a short section of the Ceiriog (major Welsh Dee tributary) and obtained a selection of fish from a sea trout of 42cms down to salmon parr.

The operator explained that the key was the right voltage setting, the fish were quickly measured in a clever device that logged the data straight into a computer and we saw shots of even the smallest parr swimming off quite safely and apparently happily.

I think that those who worry about a couple of men wading in a river having a distastrous effect on the fish are in the same bracket as those who go apoplectic about anglers catching trout out of season, handling or netting fish or even keeping the odd fish.

I applaud their concern but it is a bit over the top and they should seriously think about whether they should go fishing at all and thus completely eliminate the damage that they must, in their own minds, do to the rivers and fish.

In my view, outside the spawning season, careful wading does no tanglible damage and, even if it did, to check a few hundred metres of a river is going to have zero impact on the river as a whole.

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“There is no more lovely country than Monmouthshire in early spring. Nowhere do the larks sing quite so passionately, as if somehow inspired by the Welsh themselves. There is a blackbird on every thorn and a cock chaffinch, a twink as they call him there, on every bush...... It moved me profoundly. I had been spared to see another spring, and I thank God for it.”

Oliver Kite
“A Spring Day on the Usk”
A Fisherman’s Diary

each to their own matey.

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gus