10lb sea liced fish reported from Cadora Back to Maurice Hudson on a small Usk Grub. Other fish reported running through?

Nothing else as far as we know -is someone still being coy I wonder.!



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                                                   HATCHERIES - PETER GRAY.

Its a long time ago, some forty years that the first juvenile hatchery bred salmon was stocked into the river Tyne from the hatchery the EA built to provide compensation from the loss of spawning habitat due to the construction of the Keilder dam   The manager of that hatchery for 27 years or so was Peter Gray who eventually retired in 2005 and has subsequently sadly passed away.

I'm not going to get into the argument that the cleaning up of the polluted estuary and not the hatchery was a major factor in the Tyne's recovery.  Its pretty obvious that a reasonable estuary water quality is essential to both mature and juvenile fish.  However there is little doubt that the recovery would have been much slower and  more prolonged without the hatchery regime that Peter Gray put in place.  It still remains the best salmon river in England and Wales.

At the time of news of the rivers recovery I was Chairman of the Wye Gillies Association and I contacted Peter to see if he would come and give us a talk regarding his project as we were going through, and still are, a tough time on the Wye.  He agreed to do so and we arranged a visit to the Three Counties Hotel, which we funded, and an open meeting was arranged.   He was accompanied by an EA fishery officer Godfrey Williams, some sort of minder I suppose who basked in his achievements at the time  and later stabbed him in the back in the infamous report the EA put out regarding the hatcheries achievements  Read it online if you have not already done so. It sought to debunk much of Peters work and the conclusions gleaned from it, so much so that Peter declined to sign it.

The meeting was well attended including EA officers and those from WUF and of course lots of local anglers. Peter was a down to earth Northerner, easy to talk to and obviously on top of his game and an informative evening was had by all.   I spoke to him several times over the years and of course purchased his book Swimming Against the Tide.  (  Exactly what we on the Wye are doing at the moment in no small measure)   The EA tried to debunk much of the hatchery success but it couldn't have been too bad as they are still stocking from it today, yet other rivers are denied any stocking input whatsoever.   Probably they didn't fancy the expense of doing it.

I don't suppose any of those anti stocking believers would have changed their minds but it was impossible not to be enthused by the success of that project.  However  projects like this has to be run properly, with knowledge and enthusiasm for it to work and some do here in the UK and in many parts of the world.

We should be getting compensation for the loss of spawning habitat above the Elan Valley dams.
I always thought it was encumbent for the EA/NRW to provide this but they no longer do so.
River Wye bailiffs ran a hatchery for years at Glasbury and stocked many of the tributaries with fry and there were other projects too, more of which another time perhaps.

Suffice to say the Kielder experiment was a success whichever way you look at it and continues to this day.   EA has a hatchery based on the Usk with a hatchery manager who is one of the best.  I know too he was a great supporter of Peter Gray and his methods.   To the EA/NRWs shame it lies basically unused regarding any sort of salmon stocking.  To WUFs shame they sneeringly dismiss stocking  though perhaps there one off attempt at it should be better known. Well if you want a horror story that is.
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