We in Sussex think we have it bad for fly fishing but alls not lost at all it appears.

I have been fishing a 10 acre stream fed lake in East sussex and had four of these plus a smaller one in the lst 2 weeks while fishing with sz14 goldhead PTNs.

All were C&R, 2 had scales missing from Redd making 2 were unmarked.

Only weighed the smallest at 5lb 10oz, the biggest was 29 inches long, any guesses on weight?

Precious fish for the future of Ouse sea trout.
Have you seen these pages:

Sussex Ouse Sea Trout

I've just got a Ouse seatrout permit for the first time and I'm looking forward to the season.

Pete

I have and I have had the Wild Trout Trust visit and the societies chaps visit measuring water quality and discussed gravel log dams with them.

However the EA have recently designated the Shortbridge stream as a river so I have to go to all sorts of bother to get planning to throw a couple of trees in the stream with gravel......so waiting until a couple fall in;+)

I thought the stories of these fish were exagerated until this spring when these fish showed up. I am told by the farmer next door to me that there used to hundreds but as the water levels have reduced due to extraction so has the run.

The fish that came over the weir into the lake are now stuck here due to very low river levels, I went to look at a redd in a minute stream near here and the water was gone so no survivors there. But the good news is that there are 3 huge redds in the top of the lake.

Before I moved here near Maresfield I walked the most of the Ouse and tribs and spotted quite a lot of small browns, the Uck had the most and was un fished as far as I could tell.

Balcombe fly Fishers stock the Ouse much higher up but with Triploids, the EA should let us stock Dips really. The river can stand it.

I should add that I have not fished for these on purpose....hence the small barbless nymphs.

What exactly is an Ouse Sea trout Permit, I have only a migratory license, thought that that covered me.

Indeed it does. Sorry, I phrased my post wrongly. I meant a seatrout permit on the Ouse Angling & Preservation Society waters.
Yes, the water levels are a little worrying this year. Could do with some prolonged rainfall.
Hopefully the Ouse will see some of the Government's promised millions to be spent on river restoration.

£110 million revamp for England

Pete

The Sussex Ouse Conservation Society (see link above) has already carried out a significant amount of restoration work on the Ouse tributaries, improving spawning habitat mainly by reintroducing gravel and the pool and riffle systems so cruelly dredged out by the water board in past decades. The Society is hoping to do more over the coming years with funding such as that mentioned above, channeled to us through the Association of Rivers Trusts (ART).

SOCS is also involved with removing obstructive river structures such as the now unused weirs and sluices that hinder the passage of the trout from the sea to their spawning grounds. The Shortbridge stream has at least one of these, if not as number.

The Ouse does have a problem with abstraction. Many of the local anglers who've fished the Bevern for numbers of decades estimate that less than a quarter of the water flows in the stream now when compared against thirty years ago. This is thought to be mainly due to the ever-increasing water requirements of Brighton depleting the Brighton aquifer. Also a large problem is the amount of water South East Water sucks from the river at Barcombe Mills to top up the Barcombe reserve reservoir.

Another significant threat is agricultural pollution. There's a bad problem with a dairy farm on the Bevern. Increasingly manure runoff from numbers of equine establishments poses a threat to much of the life in the Ouse streams too.

Needless to say, the numbers of sea trout travelling the river have dwindled sharply over the past 30 to 50 years. There are now comparatively few.

If you enjoy sea trout fishing on the Ouse please feel free to support the work of SOCS by becoming a member (£15pa) or a patron (£50pa).
SOCS is also in need of volunteers for the Task Force too. The Task Force is responsible for clearing blockages from the streams and habitat improvement work such as the reintroduction of gravel and the lost pool and riffle systems. Outings are usually good fun and lots can be learnt about the Ouse catchment.
Any support of any sort would be very appreciated.

I've added a few videos of Ouse Sea Trout to YouTube. If you have any interest look here: http://www.youtube.com/user/ModelCitizen100.

__________________
Simon Turner
Barcombe, Lewes

Thanks for the link to the videos. I've just requested a joining form for SOCS.

Pete

Suspect MC2 we have met....Powder Mill???

Never mind abstraction, lack of rain is going to cause all sort of problems.

Weirs are less of a problem than I thought, if it rains, see inset pic.

When we had the one spate late January it was enough for a load of fish to jump through culvert that was thought to block Shortbridge and also this weir which is normally 1.8M.

I saw 4 sea trout making a redd up a stream only .5M wide that is a field drain, they would have had to cross 2 broken brick cattle crossings or hired a helicopter to get there.

I think, as you do, that the focus should be gravel beds, the fish are there, there is precious little area for spawning though.

The Batts stream has gravel but its small and packed with mud, ditto Shortbridge.

In both there small browns though, last year I found a 9inch brown in perfect condition, was surprised how big it was.

Presently there is so much fly life in the streams they could support a whale. Blizzards of flies..So hopefully what survived the drought will do well and multiply.

CrayValleyCrane - thanks!
http://www.sussex-ouse.org.uk

brightontrader - I've not fished Powder Mill.

Low rainfall is also a problem, but there is no denying that the spring that feeds the Bevern/Plumpton Mill (for instance) is sorely depleted. As for abstraction. SE Water were unable to abstract water from the Ouse due to technical problems for a period last year. For the first time ever in non-spate conditions I observed a reasonable flow around the big bends at Barcombe Mills. It was a revelation to see good sized chub snapping at the surface debris as it flowed round the bends. In 6 years of (almost daily) walking that stretch of river I'd not seen that before.

As for obstructions. Obstructions *severely reduce* the number of chances a trout has of being able to pass as passage is only possible at times when flow is very high. I've spent days watching trout attempt the Sutton Hall and Anchor weirs and seen the same fish get tireder and tireder as they make multiple passes at the weir or fish ladders. Every year I hoik numbers of dead trout out of the river at spawning time. Although not certain I strongly suspect that the fish become exhausted due to a combination of the difficulty of getting up the river and the low oxygen levels (due in the main to prolonged low flow conditions).

Sutton Hall weir is particularly bad. The fish pass is inadequate and I've seen fish stun themselves as they hit the wall to the left of the pass head on. This usually occurs as they start to attempt the weaker flows at the side of the ladder after multiple attempts via the stronger central flow.

In one day alone last year the weir was responsible for the death of these three fine fish:
(The boot is size 11).



Weirs and obstructions (such as the Shortbridge weir) don't just hinder migration of sea trout, they form barriers to passage of all life in the rivers and streams. There are large sections of the Ouse that don't appear to be recovering from the severe pollution incident and floods of 2000/01. It is thought that could be down to the lack of fertile feeder streams in these sections and the inability of fish and other aquatic life to easily travel up or down the river to populate those sections due to obstructions such as the Goldbridge Weir, the fall under the Sharpsbridge Road Bridge and Sutton Hall weir.

Evidence of fish not being able to navigate obstructions is also provided by "over-redding". This is where fish create lots of redds directly beneath an obstruction. The redds overlap and interfere with each other, the construction of one redd destroying a previously built redd. Then there is not enough food for the fry. For this reason last year SOCS along with the Wild Trout Association added gravel and fish passage trays to this Batts Bridge Culvert on the Shortsbridge Stream.... which may have helped the fish get to the lake you own. :-)

Anyway. There are at least two scientific studies being undertaken concerning Ouse sea trout. I think you've noticed that they are unusually large! One is concerned with trying to find out why. Anglers who catch sea trout on the Ouse are asked if they'll take a sample of a few scales and send them off to SOCS (details on web site). The scales detail the life of the trout, showing how long they spent in the river, the estuary and the sea and how many times they have returned to spawn. This data is invaluable for understanding the trout and helping to increase their numbers. BTW. It's possible that the (a?) reason for the large average size of the fish is that they leave the streams earlier than expected to take up residence in the estuary and sea. You have to wonder if they leave the stream early as the denuded environment is uncomfortable for them (insufficient flow and oxygen) and does not provide enough food.

BTW. Although there may be lots of fly life around the Shortbridge Stream there is often not much round many of the others. Possibly the Shortbridge is lucky in that it has escaped the attentions of voracious farmers who plough right up to the edge of it or whose cattle graze on the banks. This is not the case for many stretches of the Bevern for instance... and where there is no plant life, there are very few flies (of the right type anyway).

__________________
Simon Turner
Barcombe, Lewes

The Shortbridge sort of starts on my land here where the Batts and Underhill streams meet. The Underhill has no ploughed land nearby at least from above Maresfield but the Batts does, one side is pretty much intensively farmed from next door to me to well above the A272.

I have not seen any sea trout in the Batts and there is a culvert and deep pool near here that by all accounts used to be full of them in years gone by. I have been looking for them almost daily and zero...

Tons of Chub though, some barbel (small), lurking jack pike sunbathing, plus perch roach and a surprising ammount of large carp, upto around 10lbs, probably escapees from the lake here.

I put in 350 browns into the large lake last year in 2 batches, supposed to be triploids but have been catching cocks with kypes so obviously not as sterile as they should have been. some of these will have inevitably escaped down stream, others mated with visiting hen sea trout.

As its not a commercial fishery with really only a few friends fishing here, the expectation is that the numbers will increase naturally in the Underhill section, although I do not feed them.

The Underhill bit is not screened as such as fish can only go about a mile or so from lake as 10m weir at another mill by total garage roundabout. Will take a walk further up stream today as too windy to dryfly fish and see whats there. At least the water is fairly clear now, the only benefit from low rainfall.