This was recently posted on the internet by Mr Marsh Smith;

"For the record I did help the Green Bottom hatchery financially. After seeing the number of deaths of both adult and juvenile fish, we set up a modest unit at Painscastle using one of the old rearing ponds. The whole outfit including licences tanks etc cost just £12,000 and gave several years service before we handed the poisoned chalice to EAW at Cynrig."

Well he should know of course except that the old hatchery owner believes not a word of it and neither quite frankly do I.

He presumably has records of the operation at that hatchery, which incidentally he said were numbingly expensive to run but obviously not when he does it, and I suggest in the interests of clarity he publishes the balance sheet to remove any ambugity.  No doubt the owners records will show just what finances  they pumped into it too.  Well maybe not.

As for dead juveniles at the painscastle hatchery well that's another story

No doubt he just disisses the below report by the BBC out of hand. Can't happen can it?

Some of you may not have seen the item on BBC 1 National news this morning.  It relates to salmon returning in good numbers to the Rive Dove in Derbyshire.

Since 1998 150.000 smolts have been introduced annually into the Dove, a tributary of the the River Trent and, what a surprise, a run of salmon has now been established , so much so they  will now stop stocking to see if the fish are self sustaining.

Who originally stocked the Dove with salmon and where did they come from.?  Well Peter Gray did with fish from the Keilder hatchery.   Probably the smolts still come from there.

All this despite a long journey up the Trent of which the Dove is a tributary.  The programme claimed it was the longest inland journey in the UK which may or may not be true.

Its nothing new of course its been going on for years and fish returned from the first years stocking.
These were 'mongrel' fish from Keilder hatchery with parental stock from many rivers who made the long journey down the Trent to sea feeding grounds and back again despite having been reared in a hatchery.

What a smack in the face for the same EA whose 'scientists' state stocking doesn't work and who intend to stop all stocking as have the NRW in Wales.  How hpocritical can you get.

They talked about the usual fish passes, habitat work etc which is all well and good. Pretty useless without fish to use them though don't you think.