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Showing posts from September, 2009

Don't it always seem to go...you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone

John Blewitt of SPRITE recently organised a great fun social event and friendly competition on the urban River Don in Sheffield last Saturday. And what cracking fun it was too. Run by this FREE MEMBERSHIP angling club, the competition is set to become a regular event. In future it is hoped that the comp can be incorporated into a family day event and "give it a go" free angling sessions. David Blunkett came along to give his endorsements and to raise the profile of SPRITE and Mr. Blunkett's aspirations to link the local Further Education college to volunteer habitat works to safeguard and improve the river. As well as being a fun event - attended by a cross section of local anglers (including competition heavyweights like Stuart Crofts and Martin Introna!) the accurate means of measurement and recording used in Catch and Release competitions provides valuable biological census data. These data will be recorded and reported centrally to Paula Lightfoot - the Biodiversity O...

Updated monitoring of Goyt LWD

Further to an original assessment of the effects of habitat works on Derbyshire's river Goyt ( http://urbantrout.blogspot.com/2009/04/appraisal-of-trial-lwd-work-on-goyt.html ), recent E.A. electrofishing results at a short section that was subjected to bankside large woody debris (LWD) installations have captured the first ever instance of trout recruiting to this reach. Although infrequent captures of low numbers of adult trout periodically show up in surveys of this reach - there have been no previously recorded instances of juvenile fish. Furthermore, the juveniles that were captured popped up when the electrodes were swept directly amongst the branches of installed woody debris. A small result on the chart - but potentially a biologically significant insurance against recruitment failures elsewhere in the system (pollution events are an ever present threat on this, and many similar systems).