Ribble Rod
Well-known member
"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)
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)