Ribble 2010

[Ribble Rod]

"The River Never Sleeps!"

We are only two days into a new year of a new decade when we have problems, even on Christmas day morning we had what could turn out to be a serious pollution incident reported to me. This was allegedly from slurry being pumped into a beck close to Gisburn. This was passed to the E.A. and their duty officer responded to it, I hope to have feed back when they go back to work next week. Pollution effects us all whether we fish game or coarse and we should all try our best to report every pollution we come across.
Its no use reporting it days later, it has to be immediately to the E.A. on their emergency number 0800 80 70 60 then, if you ring me we can have it attended to almost immediately by our team of E.A. pollution officers. We have an excellent working relationship with the Ribble & Hodder team and they respond to our requests straight away. As the pollution officer for the RFCA I deal with approx 40 incidents per year on the Ribb & Hodd and not once have the E.A. failed to respond. The E.A. comes in for a lot of criticism at times but certainly not our pollution team.
Lets all work together to protect our valuable river and its fish, if you see anything suspicious give me a call on 01200 423314 we will have it attended to.

Yesterday one of my contacts who lives and walks the river higher up had a disturbing report. He went on to report the lack of redds cut, but, not only this, he says that the fish are not there where he sees them every year. He only counted five redds in the area of the river reconised as the main spawning area for the Ribble. This is very worrying as he is a good contact for me and his reports are reliable.

We have another problem looming which will be dealt with through RFCA. It seems that the Hydro generating plant on the weir at Settle has come on stream and it looks as if more water is going down this sluice to drive the hydro screw than either the fish pass or the weir itself. If this is correct then they are in breach of the permitted amount of water they are allowed to take from the river to turn the hydro screw.

As you can see my statement that "The river never sleeps" is true, this is where the Ribble Fisheries Consultative comes in, there to protect our fishing and rivers, The RFCA is there for us all.
Fred Higham ( Ribble Rod)

 

[Lancsflyman]

Very intresting report Fred!
Lets hope there's nothing comes out of the pollution, it's the last thing we need, just when the river seems to be getting back too its best.
It just goes to show how hard the EA work and of coarse Fred and is team. Id like to join the ribble trust myself the problem is i work 6 days a week, and would probably get it in the neck off the missis if i spend my only day off on the river working as well. I would like to be out there on the river, rather than being sat in the house doing nowt.
Happy new year
Regards Paul

 

[compagnito]

The Ribble is fortunate in having the RFCA. This organisation deserves membership and support from all anglers who fish the Ribble.

Ribble anglers on this forum are also very fortunate to have Ribble Rod keeping us informed and up to date.

Let's hope spawning has been good this year, though earlier reports were not encouraging.

Wishing everyone a brilliant year - life is always brilliant fishing the Ribble.

 

[SP8]

I had a report from a friend who knows the upper river very well and spends a lot of time on the banks that there were a lot of fish in the vicinity of known spawning areas at the end of the season so let's hope that they have paired up and found some good spawning sites.

SP8

 

[jack@ribbletrust.com]

A busy year for 2010

A happy new year to all my fellow Ribble Anglers! I hope new year and xmas were as good to you as me I certainly have some walking and cutting back to do to get back into my fishing gear comfortably.

The new year has been kind enough to me to give me a cold/man flu. Which is not what I need considering what we have lined up for the coming year starting this week:

The trust newsletter will be sent out to members hopefully in february - depending on work load, and how hard the trustees crack their whip (you listening Wildbert?!). This will have details of all of last years work, which was our busiest year to date, but soon to be out done! We have trout in the classroom kicking off this month, followed by the first fish pass works on Pendle Water in February/March. Soon after that we have two more fish passes on the Calder, habitat schemes on Pendle Water and Easington, fish passes on Swanside, Mearly brook (Tribs), Fish easements on the Hodder, Ranunculus Transplanting, revetment works to spawning channels, tree planting on existing habitat schemes, invert monitoring (by angling volunteers) and last but not least the third year of electro fishing (300 surveys!!!). Not to mention crayfish, and persuading farmers to farm in a way to minimise harm to the aquatic environment.

All this could not be done without the support of the anglers as well as general public both in terms of membership and volunteering, the Angling clubs, the EA, and the RFCA.

Our work is different from that of the RFCA, but each in turn perfectly complements each other to the benefit of the Ribble as a whole. I urge anglers to join both the RFCA and the Trust. I know this is more money from our pockets, and I can say OUR, but to see the best results for the river and OUR fishing we must be willing to spend this money. Many of the Angling clubs are already members of our trust but if yours isn't one maybe you could lobby your committee to join!

Any money given to the trust allows us leverage to raise more money from grants, it is nigh on impossible to raise 100% grant money we always need to start with something and so rely on our membership.

So News and begging done may I thank ribble rod and all the other posters on the forum for reports and to wish you all tight lines for the coming year (certainly tighter than mine last year) and hope to see you on the river bank.

 

[lax]

I had a walk up around grindleton and sawley today... only saw one fish with a touch of udn.. what was more worrying was the amount of frozen river bed in the main spawning areas.. it covered at least 40% of the gravel, and the river was frozen completely over in nearly all the slower pools. hope it warms up soon and frees up the redds for the fish.

 

[Ribble Rod]

Sunday Jan 17th.

Don't you just miss your computer when its away? never thought I would be saying that. Mine has been away for over a week being serviced and more memory added to speed me up a bit, wish we could do the same for my old body and legs, how good would that be, a new man?

I will bring you up to date to what has been happening over the last few days, always something to keep us out of mischief!. The river yesterday and today is running very big after the thaw set in. The ground is still frozen so the snow melt and heavy rain just ran away to the river.
As some of you will know if you read the reports the weir at Padiham, which has always been a barrier to returning fish, is, thanks to the Ribble Trust and the E.A. to be modified to allow fish to run and populate the upper reaches of the Calder.
At a meeting last Wed.night many anglers and reps from all interested parties attended to voice their thoughts.It was a good and very interesting meeting with some good points put forward. "To stock or not to stock" the Calder? Some wish for stocking( salmon) immediately others want to leave it for the river to re-stock itself naturally with fish that will stray into the system from other rivers and not only the Hodd and Ribb strays. This will take generations to happen and will depend on the Ribble Trust monitoring its progress.
What else has been happening? I am arranging with the web camera installer to visit two more sites on behalf of Ribble Fisheries to install two more web cams, one at Jumbles and the other at Winkley this will give the members of Ribble Fisheries three camera images showing both rivers at different places. If any angler on this system does not think joining the RFCA for just £15 per year is not woth it then I don't know what they want.
Thanks to the support of the E.A we should have the Jumbles one done very soon, and by early summer both new ones should be up and running, unless we encounter problems we do not know about. This is the time for you to decide, do you join RFCA or not bother?
If you are a member of Ribblesdale A.A. do not join or re-new your RFCA membership as an individual member as we will be issuing a statement shortly.
R.R.

 

[spffitter]

Fantastic news

The news that the padiham weir fish pass is "finally" going ahead is fantastic, not only for the obvious reason that migratory fish can return up the Calder to spawn, but for the E A to assist in building a fish pass signifies just how the water quality has improved over the last three decades.
I grew up around Nelson and the river ran black some days, the weed that clung to the bottom was dyed black, giving the river the appearance of running darker than it actually was years after the main pollution had stopped.
Slowly but surely things have improved and it started to become a regular occurrence to watch hatches of insects being feasted upon by hungry trout.
So great was the improvement, on a few occasions we fished the river to see what was in it, trout, minnow and chub were caught, nothing big but if the river could sustain a good head of trout then things were looking up.
As the river makes it way to the upper reaches there are some great little holding pools. Lets hope sooner rather than later salmo the leaper will once again be seen in waters that once had been written off.
It must be great news too for the Ribble, as I think most pollution comes down the Calder, as this river (or its tributaries) run through the most heavily populated areas an the most heavily industrialised areas of the Ribble catchment. So if Salmon and sea trout are being encouraged to return then hopefully a more vigilant approach to the spotting of pollution will be apparent throughout the Calders course, therefore the more regular small amount polluters will be identified and "encouraged" dispose of waste in the proper manner.
Congratulations to all who have worked towards this, lobbied the E A and secured the investment for the fish pass, lets hope the River responds and produces good runs of salmon and sea trout in the years to come.

 

[Karl-K]

Hi I've just joined after watching from the sidelines for a while, so I thought I'd say hello on this thread as its the Ribble & Hodder I'll mainly be fishing. The previous years threads have been really good reading and it looks like there is plenty of active members posting regular updates on catches, water heights etc. For anglers like me that have a considerable travel to get to the river then this sort of info really is invaluable and I'm sure appreciated by all.
Reading about the Calder really is amazing I remember it as a virtual open sewer. Like a lot of anglers from the area I grew up fishing the lower river around Balderstones etc I always remember getting to the river and the more experienced rods moaning with comments like " its no use - the Calders up" or in flood, the first time I heard them I didn't know what they meant but I soon learned that the bad water colour or strange smell was coming from the Calder flood water To think of Salmon moving up the river is fantastic and all involved should be proud of their efforts.
Roll on the new season

 

[wilbert]

Padiham Weir is great news indeed but there is still loads more work to do on our river system to get it anywhere close to its true potential. The work will take many hours and even more pound notes to complete. The work that the Ribble Catchment Conservation Trust and Ribble Fisheries and Hodder Consultative are doing to improve our rivers and protect our fishing is invaluable. If it wasn't for these groups there would be no fish pass, no habitat work and stock fencing, no smolt ponds, very little fish and insect monitoring, no webcam / webcams (pending) and we could well have more restrictions from the EA imposed on us than we have at present. Please support as many of these groups as you can and get your clubs involved with them too, as a big supermarkets slogan says "every little helps".

There are still a few 2009 C&R badges available from the RCCT at a cost of £2 for anyone who returned a salmon on the Ribble system during the 2009 season. You will find all the info on the RCCT website and there is a link to this at the bottom of this page.

Good fishing to all in 2010 and beyond.

 

[Ribble Rod]

Counters

Hi all.
I have just been passed the final figures for the numbers of fish which ran our two rivers last season.
In December only 28 fish went up through Waddow and through Winkley on the Hodder a further 162 were counted.

These bring the seasons total to Ribble 4976 and the Hodder 7548.

Why did over 2500 more fish run the Hodder last season??

Answers on a postcard please.
R.R.

 

[spffitter]

Very strange

It seems that quite a few rivers, either fished poorly or produced bad counter figures last year, it is strange as for a number of years a lot of rivers have been improving. Lets hope 2009 has been a exeption to the rule and things will return to "normal" this year. It makes me wonder just how effective the counters are in extreme conditions and could the huge waters we had late last year have resulted in the low figures being recorded.

 

[Deleted member 945]

What are the 'average' figures?

 

[wilbert]

I dont have the figures to hand but the 2009 Ribble counter numbers would look like an "average" number over the last 5 years or so and the Hodder is 2 to 3000 above its average over the same period. RR will give more details as he has the figures for both counters that go go back quite a few years. As a few have already said lets hope the Ribble figures are just a small blip on the upward trend that we have been seeing recently and lets also hope the Hodder counter was accurate and the river benifits from the extra number of fish..

 

[Ribble Rod]

counter figures

Hi All.

For those of you who are interested I have "dug out" the counter figures the last few years.

Regarding the Winkley counter on the Hodder. In 2003 and 2004 the counter for most of the time malfunctioned and also part of the time in 2008 hence the lower figure.

I'm assured that both counters are now accurate and recording correct

The Ribble ( Waddow) counting back from 2009 (4976) (5460)
(4983) (3717) (2471) (4751) (4188 )

The Hodder ( Winkley) again back from 2009 (7548) (2439) (4968)
(1329 ) (3591)

For those of you who are members of RFCA all the rod and line catches for both salmon and sea trout, plus the net catches going back as far as 1944 are on the front and back covers of your Annual Report. What is very noticeable are the catch returns between the years prior to 2004 when the numbers of salmon caught jumped from 556 in 2003 to a massive 1442 in 2004 and since then they have all been over a thousand salmon recorded off the Ribble system annually

That is what Catch and Release supported by Habitat improvements has done for us all. We now go out expecting to catch a fish unlike when I was fishing harder and younger in the 1980's when the annual catch of salmon was an average of about 300 per season from our river system

This is why it is so important to support your river which has the potential to improve even more, but its all down to us anglers, Without us being prepared to support the organisations and keep pushing those figures could well begin to fall. Nobody wishes to see that happen?
R.R.

 

[Deleted member 945]

Wow, if those figures are correct for the Hodder that is really encouraging. Could this be due to the stocking programme? Is there one for the Ribble?

 

[Ribble Rod]

stocking

The Hodder figures are very impressive, so much that many are doubtful of their accuaracy.
I can only report what I'm told and my contact is very reliable, if he says the counts are correct them I'm not arguing.
Its one of two things, the counter strips were modified early last year but also we must take into consideration the stocking programme for both salmon and sea trout carried out by the Hodder Consultative. From their three salmon smolt release ponds many young fish have migrated seaward for a good number of years now, and, three years ago they also began a sea trout stocking programme with a smolt pond for these fish. On the Hodder last season there were a lot of small sprods both seen and caught, these could account for the big jump in numbers of returning fish counted, if they are, then it goes to help prove that stocking with smolts is the answer. (Of the 7000 plus fish counted up the Hodder over 5000 were counted in the recognised sea trout months of june july and august ) again backing up the theory of small sprods.

Regarding the stocking of the Ribble. NO there are no plans, and unfortunately the Ribble does not have either the means or volunteers to begin a propagation scheme such as on the Hodder.

If you are a Hodder angler you have some good years to look forward to, and if you are then the Falkus Evening this April showing the important work being done by the Hodder Consultative will be of interest and will help to finance its valuable work.
R.R.

 

[Deleted member 945]

A lot of reports from below Hodder foot was that were lots of salmon last season, but above there on the Ribble we didn't see many fish. The figures seem to support this observation.

 

[Grey Duster]

Noticeably larger numbers of sea trout in the Hodder in the 1lb - 2lb size range. I had 7 in 3 day trips after brown trout in August / September (all released). All on spiders
GD

 

[Ribble Rod]

Sunday Jan 24th

Morning all
I had not seen our resident heron at Waddow since the snow and ice, I wondered if it had perished, but he is back on camera this morning.
This heron was a feature on the camera image on many mornings last year and seems to have made fishing at Waddow his own ( no close seasons for him!)
I like to see the odd heron, along with the resident pair of dippers which have for years nested under the metal grill walkway of the slamon trap. We would miss as well the sight of a kingfisher as it flashed past us when we were fishing.
These are all part of our lovely country side, and habitat enhancement helps them to survive as well as it does fish. That's what its all about, improving the environment for all our wildlife not just our trout, sea trout, and salmon
I can't say that I have the same fondness for Cormorants and Goosanders though.
Looking at the camera image the river is running at a perfect height for the salmon fly 1ft 7 I did notice that our white height markers will need to be repainted this spring when the river drops low enough. Last winter when I painted them I slipped and fell in and believe me it was bl***y cold. I think from now on I will have to find a younger lad to do it, happen Wilbert will take on this job which I have done for years. I am going to fix a permanent white plastic strip on the 12inch mark, but that's easy to do as it does not mean jumping across rocks over a deep gully.
On Tuesaday morning we are meeting with the contractors and the E.A. for two site visits for the extra cameras, so, things are moving.

Tomorrow morning we have another meeting with the E.A. at Waddow to discuss the installation of a debris deflector on the fishpass, which has been a problem since the pass and trap were modified in 1992, at long last, fingers, toes, and everything else crossed it just may be finally done.
R.R.

 

[wilbert]

. I think from now on I will have to find a younger lad to do it, happen Wilbert will take on this job which I have done for years.

I'll get my paint brush! Will talk to you about it on Thurs night.

 

[Ribble Rod]

cameras.

The site visits to Jumbles Rock( below Calder Foot) and then Winkley weir ( Hodder) both went well, and the installation of two more cameras should not now be a problem.
The E.A. have donated to the cost of one, and with Ribblesdale A.A. and Mid Ribble A.A. taking out block membership for their members, plus the new members who joined as individuals last year we should now reach our target. These two clubs decided to do this for their members knowing the benefit to those members. At just £7.50 each these members and other members of the RFCA will have both rivers covered from the comfort of their home computers.
This month is the time to pay your £15 subs to RFCA before we go into another season. The password for all three cameras will be changed over the next few weeks on the web site as it will be done annually. Even though we have managed to secure the installation costs the RFCA will have to find the annual running costs, that is why we need the support of clubs and individuals.
R.R.

 

[seeking]

The site visits to Jumbles Rock( below Calder Foot) and then Winkley weir ( Hodder) both went well, and the installation of two more cameras should not now be a problem.
The E.A. have donated to the cost of one, and with Ribblesdale A.A. and Mid Ribble A.A. taking out block membership for their members, plus the new members who joined as individuals last year we should now reach our target. These two clubs decided to do this for their members knowing the benefit to those members. At just £7.50 each these members and other members of the RFCA will have both rivers covered from the comfort of their home computers.
This month is the time to pay your £15 subs to RFCA before we go into another season. The password for all three cameras will be changed over the next few weeks on the web site as it will be done annually. Even though we have managed to secure the installation costs the RFCA will have to find the annual running costs, that is why we need the support of clubs and individuals.
R.R.

Excellent news RR - subs in the post.

 

[SP8]

Somebody last year posted a link for tide times for the Ribble but I can't find it. Anybody help? I thought I might have a look down the lower river next week for some casting practice and to have a look at club waters I haven't seen yet.

SP8

 

[worktofish]

hi peter if you go on the BBC weather center web page and put the town in it will tell you the tides