Water on the upstream catchment has resulted in a rise which may put much of the river out for a few days.  Hopefully river will remain  high until the season extension of the upper river to give fish unrestricted access to all that empty habitat espersially on the upper river above Newbridge.  Looks like the Elan will miss out on the new spawning gravel it was due to receive.

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Another open letter below from Mike Timmis.   I must say I was tempted to answer this one myself but perhaps the time is not right.  Only advice is, " drop the spade Mr Timmis your just digging the hole deeper".


Open letter from Mike TIMMIS.

You do not answer my question, John.  I will ask it again .  Which WUF projects do you support and how do you suggest they are funded?

Here are a few that you might agree with:

Barrier removal and fish pass construction.

River Habitat Improvement and Restoration.

Water quality improvement.

Who should pay for this work?    Can you think of a better solution than the River Improvement Fund being multiplied many times through matching funding to achieve a result that WSFOA could not possibly achieve without WUF having been set up by far sighted individuals.  If you want to act as  Lord Sugar , tell me a better way!

Regarding your snipe at WUF’s work on invasive weeds , I am amazed that you think this is not worthwhile.  In the context of the other WUF projects this is pretty small , but I am surprised that any owner would be happy to abandon the river banks to these alien invaders and a whole catchment approach is the only way to have any chance of dealing with them effectively.  It is no use dealing with them on your beat if other beats upstream are not tackling the problem as well. Do you think that we can rely on every owner dealing individually with this problem?

The WSFOA is being accused of being too closely aligned with WUF.  Of course we are closely aligned.  We can achieve next to nothing without them and that is why WUF was set up.  That does not mean that we do not closely monitor how our money (not yours by the way as you have not contributed recently) is spent.   WUF also has first class governance with very capable Trustees.

Anyway , it seems that you are more interested in pike than salmon fishing , so I will not delay you any longer.

Michael