A fish today from Wyesham, one yesterday from Bigswier who had another earlier in the week.  We could hit the magical 500 mark, in fact someone will ensure we will.

Last nights rain, heavy in some areas but not in others is having little effect and needs a lot more yet.


Learn more below of the disgraced NRW and their devious tactics to close hatcheries.

This I think confirms that the consultation done by them was no such thing. as we susupected the decision had already been made and we all basically wasted our time.  Its obvious our rivers are in extreme danger from these people and the cavalier way they are going about the job.

It was clear at our joint LFG meeting (Dee & Gwynedd LFG’s) in Coed-y-Brenin on 2 April that the decision had already been made to close the hatcheries, in fact the decision to close the hatcheries was probably made in November 2013 followed rapidly by the closure of the Mawddach hatchery in December. 

The meeting and the consultation period was a farce. 

The paper presented to the Board stated that mitigation stocking could cease by agreement or unilaterally i.e. NRW can ignore their statutory duties as there are no enforceable legal obligations.  It was apparent that the NRW Executive team had taken the unilateral approach with regard to hatchery closure and decided to close the hatcheries based upon flimsy scientific opinion – I have not yet seen any substantive evidence to back up the claims that stocking is harmful. 

Stocking may be ineffective from NRW hatcheries (if you believe the manipulated data presented to the Board) but this is not the case from third party hatcheries. 

It was perfectly clear from the way it was presented to us by Tim Jones at Coed-y-Brenin that the hatcheries would close irrespective of the outcome of the consultation, in fact Tim Jones at the Coed-y-Brenin meeting said that as this was not a Government consultation they were not bound to take any notice of the findings something which is apparent as 80% of the of the responses to the consultation were against closure. 

I think the fact that NRW had already produced the video (See video at http://youtu.be/uOFkjT1eyx8 ) demonstrates that any objections would be ignored. 

I pointed this out to Ceri Davies during the coffee break following the discussion on the closure of the hatcheries at the Board telling her that they had lost their stakeholders confidence in NRW fisheries officers and that communications had been abysmal – she did not look happy when I said this is not the end of this matter. 

I suspect that there are a minority in the NRW Fisheries group who are unhappy with the way this matter has been dealt with but they are unlikely to speak up as they fear for their jobs, but some have provided off-the record information to me (I have to use this information carefully as I cannot attribute it to anyone i.e. it is hearsay evidence).  It seems the guy running the Swansea research program has a personal agenda to prove that hatchery reared fish are inferior to natural fish (this is what his research set out to do), the suspicion is that data from the research has been manipulated to prove his theory.  The sample period is too small at three years for any real conclusions to be drawn I expect the research findings to be similar to the Spey report. EA(W) hatchery data on the other hand has 21 years of practical experience on the Taff to back up the fact that stocking is effective.  The research findings may well be of interest to academia but they do not support the practical experience from stocked rivers.  Under the freedom of information act I will ask NRW for the raw data from the research carried out by Swansea upon which they have based their decision.  If I can discredit this information we may be able to retain the third party hatcheries but I think the argument over NRW hatcheries has been lost.

I had a call from Moc Morgan on Thursday evening and he asked about the hatcheries on the Towy and Rheidol as both have privately run hatcheries.  I explained that once the parr have been stocked out these hatcheries will have to close, any brood stock already collected will have to be returned to the river of origin.  The same applies to the New Dovey Association who has a hatchery on the Dovey which is run by Geoff Rothwell; it will be interesting to hear what Geoff has to say at our LFG meeting next Tuesday.  The Dovey and the Towy are premier Welsh sewin fisheries, both have been stocked with salmon and sea trout for a long time without any noticeable reduction in ‘fitness’.  John Eardley said to me at the Board meeting how much better would the Towy and Dovey have been if they had not been stocked?

Moc said he will be taking this up if his health permits and explained that the hydro scheme on the Rheidol cuts off the spawning grounds and that without the hatchery the river will not support salmon or sea trout as they have nowhere to spawn, environmental improvements will not help as there is nothing to improve.  The Towy hatchery was set up to mitigate for the loss of spawning grounds following the construction of Llyn Brianne.  I assume it will be claimed that the work undertaken by the Carmarthenshire Rivers Trust will make up for the loss of the Towy hatchery, only time will tell if the lions share for the European Fisheries Fund monies used by the Carmarthenshire Rivers Trust will have the desired effect.  The mitigation on the Dee has been ineffective primarily due to the operation of the flow in the Tryweryn due to the hydro generation in the Llyn Celyn dam and the poor design of the Llyn Tegid (Bala Lake) sluices which are not fish friendly. 

I am not familiar with the problems on the Rheidol or how an eco system approach will help.  What is clear that on the Dee there is not much more that can be done as we lost 22 miles of spawning when the Tryweryn was impounded to create Llyn Celyn.  Improvements to spawning streams below the Bala Sluices cannot make up for the loss of the spawning areas that were used by the spring fish.  It should be noted that in the days of ‘river boards’ rivers were kept clear of obstructions and yet they still had a need to mitigate for the loss of spawning areas following impoundments.  UDN in the 70’s virtually wiped out the spring fish in the Dee and the river has been in decline ever since.  The successors of the river boards have reduced the work they do on rivers to save costs and they now rely upon anglers/volunteers to carryout much of the work they used to do.  EA(W)/NRW don’t make it easy for us to get permissions to clear obstructions due to the theory that ‘large wood debris’ is good for the river.  The Dee Trust with the landowner has just removed a total blockage from the Ceiriog a major spawning tributary on the lower Dee – it took a 50 ton JCB to remove the blockage.  Yesterday a group of us from the Trust removed a blockage on the Eitha a minor spawning stream which will do little to help the recovery of the Dee, there were parr in some of the pools, from the size some looked to be 2 year old, but the stream has few suitable spawning gravels and most of the river bed is scoured to bed rock as it runs through a gorge (see photograph).  It seems the desk bound scientists carry more weight than those of us with experience of managing rivers (at least 50 years in my case).

  I doubt that any of the Board members have ever observed fish spawning in rivers.  The theory that selective mating takes place is typical of those who have never observed spawning and have never watched two large cocks fighting over a hen while a smaller cock and maybe precocious parr are fertilising her eggs!  Hens do not select a mate, cocks shadow a hen and fight for the right to mate and cocks will mate with as many hens as they can which is why so many die of exhaustion in the process.

I doubt we can overturn the decision by NRW to close its own hatcheries but we may be able to overturn the decision about third party hatcheries, it was the insistence by Lynda Warren that research has demonstrated that stocking is harmful and therefore if NRW are closing their hatcheries this must be applied to third party hatcheries.   Incidentally after the Board meeting we called at the Maerdy hatchery to arrange fin clipping of our parr next week.  The hatchery was being assessed by the NRW estate group presumably to put it up for sale as quickly as possible in order to ensure it can never be used should we prove them wrong.

I will ask for the ‘evidence’ that has been used to justify the closures of hatcheries from Mike Evans; what was presented to the Board was not evidence it was only opinion.

Next steps are to Lobby Welsh Government – we need every angler in Wales to contact their AM and ask why the findings of the consultation have been ignored (80% were against closure) whilst they only received 112 responses this represented circa 18,000 anglers/riparian owners.  Once I have received and had chance to review and analyse the so called evidence (I have already been told it is flawed) I will be writing to the First Minister but as I said we cant overrule the NRW hatchery decision but we may be able to save the third party hatcheries.

Feel free to circulate this.