The club’s coarse lake’s sub group met on 14^th November. We heard updates on the work at Petersfinger, Steeple Langford and the smaller lakes.

Petersfinger;  Things have not settled with time, fish are continuing to die. Plants have been added and will be developing and helping things but water quality monitoring and fish health checks have shown that we still have problems. The lake bed silt is highly organic and is producing detectable levels of lethal toxins, ammonia and nitrite. Fish sampling has shown good gill health but with excessive mucus present and poor internal organ health. Winter months will see increased toxin levels as plants stop utilising the excess nutrients. Problems are greater In Clark’s Lake than in Hand’s. Although the levels of toxins do not generally reach the lethal levels experienced during mass fish kills in the early season their fluctuations alongside other variables such as PH(acidity/alkalinity), oxygen level and temperature cause ongoing stress to the stock and make them more vulnerable to the toxins produced when algal blooms crash overnight.

Examination of the options with various experts has led us to the conclusion that physical de-silting of the lakes would be prohibitively expensive and impractical on a site adjacent to an SSSI and SAC  and within the flood zone. The costs of such an exercise would be many hundreds of thousands of pounds way beyond any reserve held by the club and not realistically recoverable from the membership over time.

An alternative plan has been developed and will be put to committee for approval. It is at a manageable cost and has every chance of recovering the fisheries to satisfactory condition for stock to be reassessed and established in the next season in Hand’s lake […]

PLEASE NOTE:

On Sunday 24 November Sutton Veny (Map 11), Norton Bavant (Map 12) and Eastleigh (Map 13) beats will be closed.

Dr Cyril Bennett’s presentation to the 2019 Game Fishermen’s Meeting. 26th October.

Presentation given to the Game Fishermen’s Meeting by John Stoddart ( Game Vice Chair) on Saturday 26th October 209 outling the 2019 Game Season Highlights.[3d-flip-book mode=”fullscreen” urlparam=”fb3d-page” id=”3878″ title=”false”]

A lot of hard work has been done in the last few weeks. Fishing has fully resumed at Langford with good bags of mostly rudd coming from the Pleasure lake. The recent carp match saw fish caught and a winning fish of 31lbs 3oz for Ben Bentley.

At Langford a great many trees have been taken out allowing much more wind over the smaller lake, floating islands have been planted up and installed which will start to provide cover and take up nutrient load from the water. The numbers of geese have significantly reduced partly as a result of more anglers on the bank and the team working there several days each week. This will mean much less nutrient from them entering the water. Further plans include improving the car park bank, new platforms and a bit more tree work . All of this weather dependant as we enter the wetter months.

Silt and stock analysis are the next steps for the Pleasure lake.

Good signs of fish movement have been seen In Hand’s lake at Petersfinger , lots of bubbles and movement and the presence of various species and sizes seen. Much less activity in Clark’s lake.

Test fishing of Hand’s was carried out on Sunday 29^th Sept. with well over a hundred fish of various species caught and all returned safely. Sadly in the days following the exercise dead fish began to show up showing possibly  that the stock have not fully recovered and will not be resilient enough to resume fishing at this stage. EA fishery experts have been consulted for their views on this. The best analysis would be that things are improving, a decent number of fish have survived in that lake but their […]

Audio clip from BBC Radio 4 program Farming Today, first broadcast on 10th September 2019, with Hans Staartjes, Jan Szakowski, and Andreas Topintzis.

Discussing the Club’s involment and the  importance of River Fly Monitoring.