Riverfly gets going.....

Hi All

Firstly a big thank you for turning out on Sunday morning for our first Riverfly get together.

I am pleased to say that we have our first meeting booked for Sunday 18th April 10am at the Dorset Wildlife HQ just outside of Dorchester.

We hope to put various sampling sites on the map for the Frome and the Piddle and hopefully come up with a rota, if you have any areas that you are concerned about please let us know.

If you know of any more helping hands please bring them along.

Dorset Wildlife Trust HQ

Dorset Wildlife TrustBrooklands FarmForstonDorchesterDT2 7AA> Location map

Look forward to seeing you all.

John Aplin

Riverfly Group

Its been in the pipeline for far to long, but yesterday on the warmest day of the spring so far, we had our first Riverfly get together.

A great turn out of caring fisher persons prepared to give up their own valuable time to learn how to monitor water quality by looking at the invertebrate population.

We held this workshop on a small part of the river Piddle, and demonstrated a timed three minuite kick sample to collect your invertebrates, then how to wash, identify and record the various species that we found.

It was great to have a committed group form, and we will be sampling sites both on the Frome and Piddle on a regular basis, sites such as up stream and down stream of sewage works, cress beds, farms, and quarries and all results will be shared with the Environment Agency.

I know a lot of people expressed an interest but for one reason or another could not make this first get together, please get in touch and join in...... john@riverworks.co.uk

Spring clean

That really cold NE wind crept around and came from the south, bringing some warmer air for a couple of days and now as always when this happens, here comes the rain....

We actually need it, the Frome has dropped at least six inches this week, so needs a top up before the season starts.
We are out in force now, its fishery spring clean time, there is weed to be cut (on the still waters) snags to be removed, fallen trees to deal with, meetings to attend, tackle to sort out, and don't forget your new rod licence.......This EA income gets ploughed strait back into fisheries!!!!!!!!

Gentle snag removal, leave the woody debris but remove the flood risk.

There has been a vast improvement to our Frome hatches thanks to the EA WLMP project, but some bright spark has decided it is fun to try to vandalize some of these structures, when your out fishing or walking if you see anything out of the ordinary please ring the EA number on your rod licence or give me a ring and I will pass on your details, oh and please remember any poaching that is taking place please ring the EA hot line on your licence immediately, when you get home or the following day is toooooooo late!

The DDAS have some cracking Coarse Fishing in Dorset and look after some lovely fishing, here we are helping them with a weed cut prior to the installation of some new disabled angler platforms, kindly funded by the EA.

There is a lot happening in Dorset on the fishing front, get out there and get involved!

Check out all the links from this blog.........

Check this little clip out, you could be wading, with a fly rod....dream.....

River Fly Morning

River Fly monitoring, a reminder!

Lots of you have expressed an interest in being involved in our local river fly monitoring group, covering both the Frome and the Piddle.

We are moving forward with our first get together which is going to take place at-Richard Slococks “Wessex Fly Fishing” at Southover, Tolpuddle.

Sunday 21st March at 10.00am

Please bring a pair of boots or waders, and a notebook, why not bring the family it will be a fun couple of hours.

John Aplin 01305 257490 Richard Slocock 01305 848460

A great night

Last night saw the Association of Ponds Lakes and Fisheries host an evening in Dorchester with the Wild Trout Trust and I have to say what a fabulous evening.

We had over eighty people attend, all with a serious passion for water and all that goes with it, folks from the Wild Trout Trust, Environment Agency, Dorset Wildlife Trust, Institute of Fishery Management, Association of Ponds, Lakes and Fisheries, Frome Piddle and West Dorset Fisheries Association, Wessex Water, Dorchester Fishing Club, and lots of Anglers.

I know of a few people who missed out because of other arrangements, but there is the FP&WDFA agm coming up in April and we need new members so please come along and support our worthy cause, please e mail me for details john@riverworks.co.uk

Spring ?

Despite the frosts there is a hint of spring in the air, but it is still hard to imagine that we will be fishing the rivers from the 1st of April, its hard to picture a dusting of Grannom and rising fish.......
BBC weather for Dorchester this coming week gives temperatures rocketing up to a balmy 10 degrees C..........

The Wild Trout Trust in Dorchester

Shaun Leonard, Director of the Wild Trout Trust, will be presenting a talk on the work of the Wild Trout Trust, in particular demonstrating projects that have been undertaken by the Trust to restore valuable salmonid habitat on some of Britain's most challenged rivers ands streams. He will be illustrating his talk with examples of low cost restoration techniques which would be appropriate for many situations throughout the South West.

His talk will be of value to riparian owners, fishing clubs, keepers, anglers and anyone interested in the preservation of our west country rivers and streams. It will be followed by a Brains Trust question and answer session, with a panel comprising of some well known personalities including Sean Leonard and also Richard Slocock ("The Old Man of the Piddle"), John Aplin (Keeper on the River Frome and angler extraordinaire), Allan Frake (over 40 years experience of west country rivers), oh, and me (25 years of staying afloat!)

The talk will be hosted by the Association of Ponds, Lakes and Fisheries, an eclectic (but very friendly!) group, based mainly throughout Dorset, who have a common interest in all things watery.

The meeting will be taking place at The Brownsword Hall, Poundbury, Dorchester on Friday 12 March 2010, at 7.15pm for 7.30pm. Tickets are available booked through me (jc@kingcombe.com) , priced at the ridiculously good value of £8.00, to include for a glass of wine and a good plateful of refreshments. All proceeds shared between the Trust and the Association.

Wild Trout Trust

We have a Wild Trout Trust evening in Dorchester on the 12th March at 7.30pm please read the poster and give Sue a shout for your tickets....... 01935 433358

Jump at the chance for a cracking evening in Dorchester and its all to do with Trout fishing.....See you there.

River Fly monitoring

River Fly monitoring

Lots of you have expressed an interest in being involved in our local river fly monitoring group, covering both the Frome and the Piddle.

We are moving forward with our first get together which is going to take place at-

Richard Slococks “Wessex Fly Fishing” at Southover, Tolpuddle.
Sunday 21st March at 10.00am

Please bring a pair of boots or waders, and a notebook, why not bring the family it will be a fun couple of hours.

John Aplin 01305 257490 Richard Slocock 01305 848460

Cutting the Redd

After spending a while laying on frozen ground we were lucky to capture a few clips of a Salmon cutting a Redd somewhere in the Frome valley.

The count goes on

Again we started our redd counting at first light, and we both agreed that it was the coldest conditions we have ever worked in, so cold that the ink in all our pens froze, a balmy minus 4 !

I could not resist this picture of a swans landing pad on ice, and its exit route, we have seen lots of hungry creatures on our travels, including a fox chasing a pheasant during the middle of the day.

Our redd count is gradually improving in numbers, but the highlight of the day was spotting a huge hen fish sat on a redd, I say huge, she was well over 20 pounds, and not far away a dead cock fish of about fifteen pounds, great to see these big multi sea winter fish, but not in such worrying numbers, and such a shame that a percentage of them die.

On a very positive note, we only ran two hatchery boxes on the Frome this year but the hatch rate has been fantastic, I feel not only due to the amount of water but the cold water temperature has also helped.

On a much much warmer note, and with lots of Big fish check out the latest news at "Fish the Dream"

Redd counting

I think Dorset has to be the best place in the UK to live, and what makes it even better at the moment is the simple fact that we are having proper seasons, a classic wet autumn and now a freezing winter, lets hope that this trend continues for the coming spring and summer.....

We have been out again over the last couple of days collecting valuable data on the Salmon spawning areas on the River Frome, this is an important aspect of all the work taking place, on going projects with the EA, NE, DWT, CEH, FP&WDFA.

Our Frome Salmon are simply in serious danger, we need lots more hard work and help with funding for further projects, please contact us at the Frome Piddle & West Dorset Fisheries Association if you can help.

Seriously chilly at the moment, and we have been starting before first light (great at this time of the year) and today we had horizontal snow, and marked a few more redds on the GPS.

We are out again at first light, lets keep our fingers crossed that we find a few more redds!

We have covered every square inch of the upper Frome and her tributary's and the results so far prove that these silver tourists need our help in a big way!

First day of Redd counting

Having had a huge amount of steady rain in the months leading up to Christmas, a grand amount of gravel washing completed by November, a fish pass now into its second winter, no legal netting of Salmon in Poole harbour and a catch and return policy on the Frome, fingers crossed we could (should) be in for a record Salmon Redd count!

Today we headed far far up stream of Dorchester as far as the River Hooke, no Salmon redds but plenty of Trout redds, the furthest up stream Salmon redd we found was at Maiden Newton, but unfortunately this was a one off.

The next one was at Southover on some cleaned gravel that we helped the Dorset Wildlife Trust work on last year.

We covered quiet a few miles today, and we did find a few more redds, and watched some cracking Salmon doing their stuff, and Elliot still had the energy to skate back to the truck.....better add that one to our risk assessment!

Eggs and Redds

We placed our order for 40,000 Brown Trout eggs with Hooke Springs Trout Farm a little while ago,we then had nearly 50 days of rain (according the local news) which made things a little tricky!

As our deadline arrived today, the last day to safely move the eggs, the river had just dropped to depths safe enough to put our egg boxes in.

The boxes were plumbed in below a nice head of clean spring water and a fair amount of gravel added to the egg box, firstly weighing it down and secondly providing the natural redd type environment for these little fellas to hatch out in to....welcome to the middle Frome!

Elliot carefully placing the Trout eggs into one of our boxes, today was a little colder than of late, and then it started raining!

On our journey around the Frome today we came across a couple of Salmon Redds, you can just make them out in this picture below, we begin our Redd count on the Frome just after Christmas, we hope for a bumper count this time, as a result of such a long wet spell, and fingers crossed for lots of Redds above Dorchester as a result of the excellent Louds Mill fish pass......

You can see here, even after a few days with only a little rain, the Frome is running clear but very high!
Cracking Grayling fishing with a 4oz gold head!

Last night Richard Slocock and I ( both now vice chairmen of the Frome Piddle and West Dorset Fisheries Association ) attended the Wessex - Fisheries Forum Meeting with the EA in Blandford and I have to say it was an outstanding meeting, I came out glowing, the works delivered in the Wessex region in terms of fishery improvements over the last twelve months is staggering.

* Fish passage improvements on the Brit and Asker
* Frome fish passage
* Cerne fish passage
* DWT upper Frome habitat work
* DFC middle Frome habitat work
* Woodsford habitat work...awesome....
* Further works on the Stour, Piddle, Avon, work on temperature, climate change, and a whole lot more!
Trust me there is a huge amount of behind the scene work that goes on out there so that you and I can go fishing, and nearly 70% of this fishery work is funded through our "ROD LICENCES".....

Water Level Management Plan

We all heard about the Water Level Management Plan a year or so ago, sat in several meetings and to a degree there was a certain amount of head shaking and a lot question asking, one of the main questions being "will any of these plans actually reach the river"?

Well I can tell you that the Environment Agency have excelled themselves, and delivered some of the finest habitat improvement projects both on the river Avon and closer to home on the river Frome.

Yesterday we were kindly invited to view a WLMP engineering project just finished on the river Frome below Dorchester, and I have to say we were all blown away by the scale of this project and the results that we confidently feel it will achieve.

Some serious thought has gone into this project, using some new restoration practices, for example the use of whole very large trees as flow deflectors, a twenty tonne slew to, shall we say adjust the bed of the river, and a monster gravel washing machine to clean hundreds and hundreds of tonnes of previously dredged gravel, returning it to the bed of the river to restore much needed Salmonid spawning habitat.

A new method of "sliding" a grand term for narrowing the river by "sliding" the bankside into the river, causing it to narrow and at the same time extending the wet marginal habitat.

I think a huge thank you from us all is the order of the day, all this was completed by Environment Agency staff, the WLMP team, in particular Alasdair Maxwell and Allan Frake, slew driver Tony Frampton, and a profesional team of very competent machine drivers and ground staff, a credit to you all.

We have done the Redd counting on the Frome now for many years, And I can tell you, after all the work that has taken place over the last few months we are seriously looking forward to carefully monitoring all these new sites this coming winter, as the amount of Redd cutting in these now restored areas was practically nil.

Press...

I have just remembered the article "fixing the Frome" that Nick Fisher wrote for the Get Hooked Guide.

Click on HERE to have a quick read.

River Nadder

We have had a cracking few days doing some in stream work for the Environment Agency on the river Nadder, with some great results, one of the reasons we all love the game we are all in is the pure and simple fact that you are always learning something NEW.........

I cannot wait to build some of these on the DFC water!

Simple tree trunk deflectors, with instant effect.

Add in an island or two and all of a sudden you have re- created a fishery!

We have had another cracking year, what a team, a monster thank you to Mum, Dad, Captain Elliot, Tim, Rob and Terry, onwards and upwards..................................

Yep it is all good fun!

You can take a glance at further works for the DFC here

And at last after a cracking trip with Jim Whippy to the Keys with Fish the Dream back in May, we have a stunning two pages in this issue of Boat Fishing Monthly, so if you need something to read by the fire on a wet evening, you could be tempted to a fishing trip to the tropic's this winter give me a ring and we can chat about monster fish.........

Where next..........

We are forever throwing ideas around as how to improve and expand our "Riverworks" company, and we do have some exciting plans in the pipeline for the early part of 2010, but at stupid o clock this morning I thought of the "Jurassic fishing centre" we could do everything to do with fishing, everyone could come on board, we all have different skills within this field and the untapped facilities down here in Dorset are second to none......I feel a plan coming together!

On a slightly more realistic note, other than the exciting work we are doing on the DFC water we have just spent a few days with the Dorset Wildlife Trust working on a chalk stream project designed by Sarah Williams, and a digger and driver from Kingcombe Aquacare----What a team.....

We have opened up and re created lots of superb Salmonid spawning gravels from a river bed that up until now was literally like concrete!

The compacted gravels had a serious shake up with the digger, we added some flow deflectors, and let in a little dappled sunlight as a result of felling one or two trees to obtain materials for our in stream work.

Here you can clearly see the flow deflectors in action, a slight pool followed by a seriously sexy riffle, lucky Salmon.........

A slight amount of erosion control, a little river bed re-profiling and as you can see some great Kingfisher habitat.

Constructing another riffle at the same time as creating a back water to encourage various marginals to grow and of course good fry habitat.

I did manage to do a blog entry early yesterday and then for some reason posted it to the DFC site so if you would like to read it you can at http://www.grhe.co.uk/

The evenings are drawing in pretty quick now, it was getting dark when we finished last night, and even darker when I returned home after the Association of Ponds, Lakes and Fisheries AGM which was followed by a most interesting talk by the DWT on gardens and wildlife.

Ben rang late and talked me into a Cod trip later today, which meant having to be in the office at 4am this morning, its so quiet not even the birds are awake, but a great time to work, I tell you we are buzzing at the moment, and here is something to get excited about, some of the worlds top fly fishing film makers (Rise, fly fishing film festival) and photographers are putting on some films here in the UK our nearest cinema where this is happening is in Exeter, full details HERE

I know this will be a great evening but we need to get tickets pretty fast, I am just worried about being further tempted by these exotic fly fishing destinations.

Living the dream.....cheers Ash!

"Living the dream" is a sort of private joke between all the folks in this area of the country that are involved within fishery industry, the saying evolved from a Kingcombe Aquacare site earlier this year and has spred as the aquatic moto, wet, cold, covered in mud and stinking of silt, late home,7 days a week, stuck in the office, "Living the Dream....."

Tim and Elliot weaving the willow......

The riverworks gang have been out in force this week, myself, Elliot and tim have been busy on the DFC water constructing more Willow islands, willow bank revetment, flow deflectors, and lots of tree trimming, whilst Terry and Rob, and Tim (poor Tim always in two places) have been putting in some serious hours jet washing spawning gravel on the Frome.

The Swans liked the slack water created by one of our new islands.......

Great to see Elliot enjoying his work, I cant repeat what he just called me!

Just after this picture was taken we paused for tea and cake..........

We finished our tree work earlier than planned today and sped to the beach in search of a Bass, John G missed one, but only just......

Next week, more of our habitat work, a project for the Dorset Wildlife Trust, and a trip to the River Nadder and a little research into a possible trip to Chile with a Fly company in Spain  http://www.salvelinus.com/

Islands

As I mentioned on my last blog, we had a day booked out on Top Cat, well yes the wind did get up and then dropped again the day after our cancelled trip, typical, either this fishing luck thing is with you or its against you, you just have to keep plodding away at it.

It really has been an outstanding year, we have all caught a few PBS, I have had a PB Tarpon and a PB Garfish and a PB Blonde....Nice.....

We have ended up on the famous Chesil bank on more than one occasion so far this autumn in search of a Cod (that everyone else seems to be catching) this weekend a few big fish were caught up until we arrived to fish the evening tide, I missed one rather good fish that nearly pulled the rod and tripod over, I picked up the rod, nothing there, how the hell do they do that, on a 4/0 pennell ?

Seconds after this picture was taken, Scott wound in, re baited and cast out.....



It pays to use lots of fresh bait....we made him put this little fella back!

We fished until late, and I caught one of my smallest Pout, then it was time to think about work....

One of the passions we all have is habitat improvement work on chalk streams, and we have a few projects on the go at the moment, and building willow islands on the Frome is one of our favorites, this adds a great deal to the flow variation, and also cleans and loosens the gravel making it better for Salmon, Sea Trout and Brown Trout spawning.

A lot of our habitat work is funded by the Environment Agency, a huge thank you from all involved in Dorsets chalk streams, so when you all buy your rod licence you now have some idea that at least some of the revenue raised is being used locally, and for very good causes, I was at a fantastic seminar last week with the EA and the IFM and there was a paper presented by the Barbel Society on some of the work done on the Dorset Stour, great stuff and all in the name of conservation.........