See below a picture of a decomposing salmon found on the bank at Wyeseal, Bigsweir last weekend. As you can see in its mouth is large red flying C. this was armed with a large barbed treble hook, Two prongs were in the tongue and another in the mouth. A section of line was attached and someone had obviously broken off from the fish.   Was it YOU perhaps?.  If so perhaps you should think long and hard about why you do this.  People try and deny this happens quite often but it does and even had the fish been landed hooked in the tongue you stood little chance of removing it without probably causing its death..  I mentioned last week people even in the current conditions were still raking the river with flying Cs. Is catching a fish this way really that important to you?  We don't want more restrictions but isn't it time to think long and hard about using this bait. That's my personal opinion by the way.

Two. small grilse to Andy Fenner at Cadora - spinning.

Extra water from the Elan Valley now ceased. River dropped  4" since yesterday at Newbridge. Despite the claims of success nothing really changes does it..


MORE FROM ANDY HURST THE THE LUNE EA BATTLE.

Dear All,

I have just written a letter to David Cameron on the subject of the EA Fisheries Division a copy of which is attached.  (I apologize to those who already may have had it.)

In the last few days, the EA have responded to my/our criticisms of their performance at Forge Weir by refusing to allow their Team Leaders etc to communicate with us and have asked that all communication/enquiries be directed to the North West Communications team - no doubt so they can vet the replies!   They have also sent me a copy of their Rod Licence Update Magazine where it clearly sates on the flyer they consider those who don't pay their licence fees to be cheats.  From the timing of their email and never having had one before, I supposed this, too, was connected to the letters I have sent them!  I immediately sent it back reminding them it was they who had cheated and failed anglers and are the crooks in all this.  I am waiting for their response!

Thanks for all your support so far and I have now received many, many emails of support from up and down the country.

Best Regards
Andy Hurst,

LETTER TO THE PRIME MINISTER.

18^th July 2014,

Re: The Future of the Nations Rivers and their Fish Stocks.

Dear Prime Minister:

I know you are a very busy man and have many issues to deal with in this country and the throughout the world, and many of these issues you will rightly think, and prioritise, as being more important than what is going on within our rivers, but I but I do hope you can find time to read the letter below and possibly support some of the issues I am bringing to your attention.

I am basically an angler in the North West who has fished the region’s rivers for many years and over those years have developed a real passion for the sport and a genuine respect for the army volunteers who spend many, many hours of their own time managing both the rivers and the riverine environment.  Like many other anglers I spend much of my time doing voluntary work to monitor and improve not just the rivers but the countryside as a whole.  I support your idea of the Big Society and am an active member of it.  Also, like many other anglers, I support our local Rivers Trust (I am in fact a Trustee) and have been involved in several fund raising activities to support the improvement work that goes on.  Like all the other Anglers and Rivers Trust members I am grateful for funding that occasionally comes our way from Central Government (not enough though I might add!), which I can assure you, we do put to very good use and without it many of our rivers would still be in a very sorry state.

As you probably already know, angling as a pastime brings many millions of pounds to rural economies and without it many would suffer hardship.  On the Lune alone Anglers bring in more than £0.5 million to the Lune valley in north Lancashire and Cumbria.  Angling supports many jobs and is a brilliant past time, and if developed properly, it may keep youngsters off the streets and out of trouble.

However, like many other Anglers throughout the country I am bitterly disappointed with the performance of the EA Fisheries division when it comes to fulfilling the roles and responsibilities placed upon them particularly with respect to their duties under the 1975 SAFF Act.  Whilst I accept the EA have a difficult job and have rightly focussed their resources onto life and business critical improvements, and in several aspects of this work, particularly flood defence, are now doing an excellent job, I believe that because of the competing roles they find themselves  having to fulfil in fisheries, they struggle and fail to deliver even a basic service to the angling community.  Were you aware that in the last 20 years the EA Fisheries Division have taken more than £500 million pounds from anglers and during that time have presided over nothing other than continual decline of fish stocks in most of the nation’s rivers - which is most evident in those rivers which used to support healthy runs of salmon and sea trout?

You are probably aware, that salmon stocks in most of our nation’s rivers have been in decline for the last 20 years, but were you aware that the EA’s Fisheries Division has done very little about it other than continually demand that angler’s reduce exploitation rates?  Anglers being a responsible body, have always responded positively to their requests but eventually you do reach a point whereby you have to start asking questions about why is it happening and what  measures are being taken to manage the situation.  Believe it or not, anglers do like to catch fish when they go fishing as I am sure you will agree with me, fishing in empty rivers is a pointless past time and not likely to lead to increased participation!

No doubt if you do find time to question the EA on this subject they’ll come back and tell you they’ve spent many millions of pounds on habitat restoration and other grandiose schemes and don’t get me wrong, I won’t disagree that some of this was necessary and I take my hat off to the many voluntary groups that have carried it out, especially some of the work done by Trusts in recent years.  But whenever I have asked the EA Fisheries Division and EA scientists what is it that is causing the decline or what is it that we are supposed to be managing, would you believe that having had more than 20 years to study the problems and taken more than £500 million of anglers licence fees (plus many millions of pounds of other Government funding), the EA Fisheries Division are no nearer knowing the answers to both questions than they were 20 years ago preferring on most occasions to state conveniently it is all due to ‘an event in the North Atlantic close to their feeding grounds’.  I am absolutely sure that if any other government department performed like this you would have called them to account for their performance many, many years ago and that they would no longer be in existence.

I, like many other members of the Angling Community in the North West Region, are also absolutely disgusted about their (EA Fisheries Division) behavior towards Anglers and the Angling Community which has got significantly worse in recent years particularly since we have seen the demand of Hydro Electric Power (HEP) developers to put small and micro scale hydro Power generating plants on our rivers.  I know the EA often find themselves in a difficult position trying to balance the competing interests of Anglers and HEP developers but the shoddy way they have treated Anglers and Riparian Owners in the North West in recent years beggars belief.  I don’t know whether you were aware but the EA recently granted HEP developer permission for such a scheme on Forge Weir on the River Lune. The developer who wanted to build it, needed to gain access to land owned by someone who was against it being built.  The owner knew that if he could hold out for the legally stated period of 6 months permission could not be granted and it would not go ahead.  However, it seems the EA bent every one of their own rules during the ‘consultation period’ allowing other parties time to make adverse possession claims on his land.  The owner was eventually forced to capitulate to development demands as his defense costs began to outstrip the capital value of his fishery. (We have all the email evidence to support our statements here).  What-is-more, the consultation which took place with the Angling Community and the Rivers Trust could at best be described as a farce with the EA Fisheries Division eventually riding roughshod over all Anglers’ and Riparian Owners’ concerns.  (Fish Legal put out an excellent newsletter confirming what I have written here is absolutely true).

What-is-more, on The Lune, Anglers now have to suffer the indignity of the EA selling off a trapping facility at Broadraine Weir to South Lakeland District Council, just so another Hydro Developer (KSET) can gain access to it at no cost .  This Trapping facility pre-dates the EA and was built in part by funds raised from anglers license fees.  To sell it off, or give it away as they intend to do in this case is, they argue, legally permissible as they no longer have a need for it.  However, morally and honestly it belongs to anglers who over the years have funded the EA fisheries team, and then when the EA pulled out 20 years ago, have operated it voluntarily ever since. 

Another issue we have difficulty dealing with and understanding is that the EA Fisheries Regional Technical Specialists openly admit they now spend most of their time working on Hydro power applications and when they do, as we have seen on the Lune, they come up with anti-angling solutions which they then seek to impose on the angling community without consultation.  Despite what the EA may tell you, these Technical Fisheries Specialists are funded (whether it is directly or indirectly) by anglers via our licence fees, and what we find amazing is that they almost always propose solutions directly at odds angling interests!   What other organization would fund specialists to put forward cases and implement solutions directly at odds with their interests?

Another major issue anglers have with the EA Fisheries Division is that there is an element within them that continue to run with their own anti-stocking agenda.  Even with stocks as low as they are in our rivers, they are against all forms of stocking with fish reared in hatcheries.   They state that scientific evidence supports their case that hatchery bred fish are less fit than their wild cousins, and to some extent there is evidence to support their case.  However I, like many other anglers, pride myself in reading much of the published scientific papers relating to fisheries and fisheries management and nowhere in any of the literature is there any evidence that stocking with ova or fry does any damage whatsoever. The problem is when Parr (small salmon) are raised in a hatchery and then released their survival in the river is reduced.  However, there is no evidence anywhere to support that stocking with ova (eggs) or Fry  (emergent young salmon) stages does any harm at all.     No doubt when you question them on this too, they will come back stating that even though there may be no supporting evidence they are applying the precautionary principle just in case it may damage stocks. Even though stocking UK Rivers with fish from hatcheries has been going on for more than 100 years.   As I mentioned above there is an element amongst our beloved Fisheries Division who are ‘ blind purists’ and who are against stocking of any kind and unfortunately for our rivers, they are in ascendency at the same time as stocks appear to be in terminal decline.  In the North West our Regional Fisheries Technical Specialists have stated it is their intention to stop all forms of stocking by the end of 2014 irrespective of what anglers think or the fact that it now costs them very little to support it as most of it is done by voluntary organizations – the type of voluntary organization aligned perfectly with your Big Society’ campaign.

The EA Fisheries Division have allegedly now been told they have to ‘sort out the rivers’ – what ever that means - and I have to ask you, given their performance to date, do you honestly think they are capable of doing it?  After all they appear to have so called ‘scientists’ running the show who want to do nothing other than allow rivers to repair themselves and we recently saw the consequence of this type of thinking on the Somerset Levels; please do not allow them to do it to the rest of the nation’s rivers!!!

I am sure you do have bigger fish to fry and can’t justify your getting involved in what’s going on in our rivers but if you could just take time to read what I’ve written and listen to our case and/or point someone in our direction who may be able to sort out our rivers, particularly with respect to how the riverine environment supports angling, it would be a massive step in the right direction.  

One body you may want to involve more in sorting out the Rivers and who may make a much better job than the EA Fisheries Division would be the Angling Trust.  They have angling interests at heart but are sensible to know that there are other competing interests to be catered for.   At least if they did have the lead role there may be a good chance we can hand our rivers over to the next generation in a better state than they are now or even when we inherited them.  That is my personal driving ambition (and now I believe that of many other anglers) and is really the reason I took time to write to you and to ask you to personally intervene.  If we fail, our children and grandchildren will be condemned to fish in fishless rivers and Lakes and rightly be able to pin the blame on us. 

I know this is a personal letter and it is likely that you’ll pass it over to the EA for their comments, and no doubt they will go to great lengths trying to prove that they’re correct and I’m wrong.   But the bottom line when they’ve done all that is that their record will still remain dreadful and their behavior appalling.  I watched you earlier this evening speaking out about the Airline crash in the Eastern Ukraine.  You spoke about larger nations bullying smaller ones and the need for the smaller nations to stick together and face up to the bullies (Russia in this case).  I see so many similarities here between the behavior of the Russians and that of the EA Fisheries Division who treat the licence paying Angler as nothing more than an irrelevant nuisance most of the time. 

I am a member of several angling organizations in the region; I chair rather large fisheries consultative, am a member of the North West Fisheries Consultative all of whom are members of the Angling trust.  I am a trustee of a Rivers trust.  Hence, like you, I represent many people.  I hope I have spoken wisely and respectfully on their behalf and I do hope that you can find time to listen to our case and point one of your more capable ‘rods’ in our direction.

Yours Respectfully

Andrew Hurst