How sad is this..............



As seen on BBC Midlands last night. Please send us any spare rain you may have. These water levels are getting to be beyond a joke. I only hope that the work on the weirs does the trick, otherwise.....................birdsnest

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Fear not if I steal from your side, as of yore, from paradise streams to fish Teifi once more.
BN based in Wolverhampton

Awful news indeed BN.

The Shropshire/Herefordshire rivers I've fished this year have been woefully low all year, one wonders what affect this will have on these rivers in the following years.

Of course, the high levels of abstraction doesn't help the cause

On the plus side...some of the rivers around Mid-Wales I frequent are showing very good numbers of salmon/redds in them this year so hopefully they will produce plenty of offspring to return to the sea...if the piscivorous birds don't get them first!

Mick.

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http://micksflyfishingdiary.blogspot.com/

I hope some of the heavy rain we had this weekend - with more forecast tonight - found its way to the upper Teme so they can break-out to run naturally and reach the redds in time.

Big fish, some 30 pounders, by all accounts. It was only a few weks ago that I read in T&S (Nov 2011) that the 20 year Teme 'restoration stocking' programme was signed off as completed.
This following Chris Brainger's team final stocking of the Teme, 43,000 juvenile salmon, during September this year. These reared in partnership with EA Wales at their Mawddach hatchery following the earlier closure of EA Midlands Region hatchery on the Severn Clywedog tributary.

Link and extract to birdsnest's original BBC article.

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Save the softmouth trout

Really hope you get rain... to help the future stocks... we lucky over here, was looking at salmon pushing threw a water fall this morning...

I will do a rain dance for you BN

David

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Remember, there are two kinds of fishermen, those that fish for sport and those that catch something.


My new website,still lots of work to do on it..!![URL="http://www.flyandlures.com/"]http://www.flyandlures.com/[/URL]

I sincerely hope you are right Eph...............It seems to be in the lap of the gods at the moment..............Let's all join PT in a rain dance..............birdsnest

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Fear not if I steal from your side, as of yore, from paradise streams to fish Teifi once more.
BN based in Wolverhampton

The first salmon made it over the temporary fish pass at Mill st weir today!

For more details and background have a look here:

Severn 2011

post 659 onwards for reports on the current crisis.

The Teme weirs trust are trying to present themselves as being supportive, if you believe that you'll believe anything.

The 'heritage' lobby have been doing everything they can to undermine the good work done by the EA on the river. It has been revealed that the heritage section of Natural England recently funded the rebuilding of a weir on the Teme without a proper fish pass being put in place.

A long term programme of barrier removal, habitat improvement and limited pump priming stocking has seen salmon runs on the river improve. Counter figures and redd count numbers show a positive trend.The problem for anglers is that we've seen low flows in recent seasons and the fact that more fish are running the river after the season closes.

Yesterday's rain only put an inch on the river at Ludlow and there's nothing much forecast till sunday, so the fact that a few fish are starting to find the emergency pass and use it is vitally important.

The scale of open brazen poaching in Ludlow has been something else. Apparently you can get £50 for a bin bag full of stale salmon (to be mixed in to fertilizer?). The EA fisheries and enforcement people should be congratulated for the work they've done to put a stop to it and for the way they've acted to force temporary fish passes on to the protectors of the 'listed' weirs. Normally anglers like to knock the EA but they really have done a first class job in this case and are trying to build momentum for the broader agenda of removing obstacles on the Severn system.

Sad state of affairs. Weir restoration ? More governement grants no doubt.

Good news, it was lashing down with rain in the borders last night

Its good to see the stocking on the Teme has been so successful

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The word 'politics' is derived from the word 'poly', meaning 'many', and the word 'ticks', meaning 'blood sucking parasites'

I'll second that. The Daily Mail are now covering this story, I see no harm in repeating the image of Chris Brainger working on his emergency fish passes; which also seem to work.

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Save the softmouth trout

Good news and bad news

The bad news is that the Teme at Ludlow has hardly risen at all (1.05m tues am to 1.07m thurs am) as most of the rain over the last couple of days has again missed the catchment.

The good news is that despite this the salmon are successfully taking the weirs in numbers.

What was a trickle yesterday turned in to a substantial run today with one eyewitness counting fish going through the new pass at Mill St at a rate of one every two to three minutes.

The EA are now confident enough that the fish are getting through, that they have lifted the temporary block on the fish pass at Ashford weir just below Ludlow. This had been put in place to stop the build up of fish at the Ludlow bottleneck.

People have seen the pictures of the pass at Mill st, the temporary structure at Dinham is slightly different it is what's known as a baulk fish pass.


For an example see here. Illustration 2.
Water Framework Directive Funding | Wye & Usk Foundation

They had to put this in as Dinham weir was accidently damaged while the EA were attempting to install a structure similar to that at Mill St.