as an EA employee i wondered how the lack of maintenance to rivers in england and wales is effecting your fishing, all my local rivers are in a hell of a state. the farmers are up in arms as they are losing great chunks of field on the river bends. some of the long term blockages are creating deep pools and large islands of river bed. does letting nature take its course improve river fishing or are they just closing up making them impossible.

In truth - there is much more very damaging maintenance done than helpful maintenance.


As long as riverbanks are not overgrazed, there are great benefits to having what is called "lateral scour" occur. This is where the material from the outside of one bend forms a deeper pool. Typically the bed material that is scoured from one bend is deposited on the inside of the next bend.

Linked together this variety is what enables fish to thrive (along with the foodchain on which they survive).

Natural "blockages" (i.e. log jams) are almost never impassable to fish. In the correct places they also promote a spreading out of the peak of floodwater flows. This protects the river from flooding at pinch points such as bridges.

Usually the worst thing you can do to a river is to dredge it and remove all the trees. This is akin to ripping the backbone out of a river - and also is a rubbish way of producing "flood protection". The drainage programmes undertaken in Ireland are living proof of what a total disaster that approach is.

By all means clear out bridge arches of debris and every few years do a very little light coppicing of some trees to maintain a diverse age structure.

Beyond that - leave the river the f&$k alone for either flood defense or for the benefit of fish and other river wildlife.

---------- Post added at 09:34 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:33 PM ----------

Oh - and maybe fence out grazing stock for a decent width buffer strip next to the bank if there is a reasonably high density of the beasties.

Bit of an over generalisation as far as flood defence goes I think. The chalkstreams need constant - albeit a lot more subtle - management as do most man made things. To abandon them completely to nature is nothing short of vandalism as has been very recently highlighted where a change of policy has now thankfully been adopted.
To leave a chalkstream the f&$k alone is not an option but carefull, subtle and a more thoughtfull management policy is.

Reg Wyatt

i think most of the work carried out was more about land issues if a river redirects around a rolled tree root then the farmer on the other side of the river gained what sometimes would be a large strip of field. also we never cut trees to open the rivers we usually bundled them in the bank to promote more growth to act as a buffer. as to your comment about leaving them the f***k alone, well its a safe bet that we already have...

Trouts developed in unmended waters, full of curves, roots, fallen trees etc. That is their natural environment. And when you have such water, even very small, you can bet that there are some serious giants lurking around. I will give you an example, that i think sums it up nicely from a book Muharjenje (Flyfishing):

...In 1977, thre giants between 60 and 80cm, weighting several kilos, were cought in ribniška Bistrica in Zimarice stretch. In that area, Bistrica is nothing but a small stream, with minimal flow, yet unmended, full of curves and overgrown pools with underwater roots, where such fish can hide. Bottom is healthy and provides plenty of food for all water inhabitants. Lower, where Bistrica is mended and bigger, there is plenty of fish, but they barely reach the minimal lenght...

And i cen tell you from personal expirience, that the above stated is absolutely true.

Reg, - You are spot-on here, and I could not agree more with your comment.
My local club is sadly predominantly focussed towards coarse fishing (with us fluff-chuckers very much in the minority). The prevailing thought and policy as far as the club's chalk-stream stretches are concerned is to simply do nothing, which in turn has the effect of rendering the vast majority of the waters largely unfishable. Perhaps more importantly, we have seen a steady decline of trout and grayling numbers over time, which I feel is very sad for all irrespctive of the type of fishing any member chooses to employ.


Aidan

May be I shouldn't comment on this living a bit far North, but here is my bit anyway
Last year a burn close to my home which sea trout spawn in had been eating a way at a field by 5ft in the past 2 years and the gravel in the bottom had become choked with silt it should be noted that this way on quite a sharp bend.A membrane was placed against the banking and small armour rock put in place which has worked a treat as the the bottom of the burn is now nice and silt free again, it may not be as aesthetically pleasing on the eye as some of the reinstatement that I have seen on rivers but will undoubtedley last a long time and leave good beds for spawning time.
So I would say that maintenance is a must but must also be done in a practical way even if not as pleasing to the eye as some would like it.

What you describe is fairly common in many areas of the PNW. That said, it's AMAZING how many permits you need to do such an obvious, and simple, thing for stream bank retention. When our rivers/major streams flood, they really flood!

Folks in Tennessee are in the process of cleaning up after a 1,000 year flood (no, that's not a mis-type). Seen many 100 year floods in my day (and one 500 year flood here on the Rogue about three winters back) but one and all can cause a hell of a mess.

fae

Chalkstreams, since they are almost entirely man made, require some careful management in order to sustain fishing. Agreed.

However, they must surely be the most frequently mis-managed of our surface watercourses?

They also are not in the same league as huge spate river catchments with respect to potential for flooding (especially when you consider the typical network of hatches and water meadow systems that they usually form a part of).

Strimming the banks right down to the waters' edge and installing vertical toe boarding is the best way to make life hard for your mayflies and provide very limited habitat to hold fish (as well as the rest of the "no no" list below...).

One of the major issues is the need to cut back Ranunculus (water crowfoot) in order to provide channels for the water to escape. This is, in many cases, absolutely necessary where there is no scope for alternatives. However, with better overall habitat management, you wouldn't get a monoculture of Ranunculus in the first place. You would have a nice healthy patchwork of different plants as well as the accompanying great fly hatches for good dry fly sport.

Ranunculus is a very good habitat for many flies, and also provides much-needed cover. However, too frequently we end up with it dominating the whole width of the river. This shouldn't happen - and with better training and information coming through all the time - its up to us as anglers to ask for it.

I still maintain that it is depressingly common for interventions to relieve "blockages" on rivers are actually harmful to both the fishery and the flood risk to properties.

We have access to much better information and practices than our fore-fathers but we seem depressingly slow to adapt and change (and as a typical Brit who likes nothing better to look down on our trans-atlantic cousins; it pains me somewhat to say that North America is far, far, far ahead of us on this one ).

If you don't think that chalk streams are frequently mismanaged - here is a list of things that reduce the numbers of fish (whether stocked or wild) for you to fish for:

Blanket bank strimming (especially "putting the river to bed" at the end of the season)
Vertical toe boarding
Dredging the stream bed (either for "drainage" purposes or for wartime tank defenses)
Over widening (causing excessive siltation)
Over supply of sediment via overgrazing/bankside poaching
Over siltation caused by installing weirs
Habitat fragmentation caused by installing weirs
Removal of all natural debris falling into the water
Blanket tree removal
Harrowing the stream bed for weed control

I'm sure there are more examples, but the bottom line is I just feel sad that we are so backward in our thinking in this country. We don't think that there is anything new to know any more; and that is just plain wrong.

I wholeheartedly wish to support the plea for thoughtful and light touch management that Reg W advocates - I just want that to be as well informed as it can be (since it is often completely at odds with what the majority of people believe is the right way to go about it). I would also be prepared to bet my shirt that more bad things get done in the name of fishery management than the good things that tend to happen with a slightly more relaxed/hands off "default position" that can be modified with more direct intervention USING THE BEST CURRENT PRACTICE only when it is merited.

I also welcome the opportunity afforded by this thread to kick some discussion off in the area

Just to provide some context to the default of "leave rivers the eff alone" when it comes to "blockages". This is where I live:

Photo looking upstream from a bridge spanning the full width of the river (bridge arches set the hydrological limit!)


Photo from same point following "Flood alleviation" work:



The depressing thing is that the site went through this intermediate stage which, whilst still probably well over the top, was far less disastrous from the fish and invertebrate's point of view. Most gallingly, this has done nothing to reduce the risk of flooding - if anything the flood risk is slightly higher because the water flashes through the flat section much more quickly (as it does on all the other sites where this approach has been applied). Therefore, all the flood waters arrive at the same pinch point at the same time - causing a "traffic jam". The solution to reducing the actual flood risk cannot be achieved in the channel - other than keeping bridge arches clear - since the problem is flash flows into the river from surface drainage and however deep and wide you dig the channel - there are tens of bridges over the river which impose their own limit on the channel capacity.....