An Avon roach (and a visit to the Avon Roach Project)

[Ally]

Ally - the river could and did support roach - but in severely decreased numbers.

Britford, Longford, Somerley, Hale, Winkton, etc all had 2lbers before the restocking but perhaps with only a few - very few in some areas - being caught.

The restocking, plus other factors, has replenished and increased the breeding stock to the state it is now. Viewing the spawning boards from the beginning will show this increase.

Whatever - the roach are back and thereby lies a lesson to all river managers regarding the positiveness of doing just that! Restocking.

Well I dunno. I havent seen any reports about reduced numbers and fish numbers go up and down anyway so whos to say stocking has made any difference. I know my club has done a lot of stocking but doesnt seem to make any difference in the long run.

[Olly]

Ignorance is bliss - the world goes on and on!

~This why the Roach project is soo special! ~

[Tengisgol]

A mate of mine has just reported his catch of 27 roach from Britford today to 1lb 9oz. 6 more over a pound and all but three needed the landing net. The Avon really is coming good.

[DaceAce]

Far from Ally being ignorant he is raising a pertinent point. The EA surveys are simply too disjointed and confined to very small areas to prove increases/decreases of roach stocks. Their own surveys admit that roach are impossible to assess accurately in a river like the Avon because it is too big in width (on the lower Avon they can only electrofish down the edges) and too weedy to get consistent results. The surveys are done on a 5 year basis for the whole river and on any one year the weed will vary; nowadays the increased weediness due to weedcutting stopping makes it largely a waste of time for roach. So there's no true baseline for roach stocks from surveys only anecdotal evidence from anglers which depend on conditions and where and who is fishing. Stretches like Upper Winkton are not surveyed, at least this stretch wasn't in the original baseline survey. From the old days of my day job as an analyst attributing an unconfirmed improvement on a single, not particularly significant factor, based on wishful thinking, would have resulted in being held to ridicule at best.

I'd suggest that the Britford roach stocks - well-protected by the keeper - have benefitted more from the Salisbury DAC restocking than the ARP.

I'd also suggest, having access to details of some of the incredible roach catches from the Avon in the past (other rivers eg the Stour and Wensum had similar) that the Avon has a very long way to go to be back to its former glory, eg match catches of 92lbs (Salisbury) and 64lbs of roach (lower Winkton), or a match catch including 15 over 2lbs at Ringwood, or a 200lbs roach catch at Salisbury or Len Parker's 100lb+ catches or Dave Howes' 80lb+ catch at Ibsley.

[Troydog]

This is a great thread - thank you for sharing Tengisgol.....

[Olly]

The BTO & other bodies regardng birds and their numbers, breeding, etc, are very accurate in their records going back in time.

It appears that angling is not in their league as DaceAce has just pointed out. Records of fish and their captures through matches, press, etc are an important marker to compare against in the present.

Perhaps more data should be found and made available in order to judge how events/fish stocks/fish sizes are progressing - or declining?

[Tengisgol]

I'd suggest that the Britford roach stocks - well-protected by the keeper - have benefitted more from the Salisbury DAC restocking than the ARP.

I'd also suggest, having access to details of some of the incredible roach catches from the Avon in the past (other rivers eg the Stour and Wensum had similar) that the Avon has a very long way to go to be back to its former glory, eg match catches of 92lbs (Salisbury) and 64lbs of roach (lower Winkton), or a match catch including 15 over 2lbs at Ringwood, or a 200lbs roach catch at Salisbury or Len Parker's 100lb+ catches or Dave Howes' 80lb+ catch at Ibsley.

In the same way that we can’t say, with certainty, that the trigger for improvement was the ARP work, we surely can’t attribute any greater importance to stocking efforts by SDAC. That just doesn’t stack up does it.

For my part I think it is multifaceted and we will just never know but, whether it is driven by the work of volunteers from Salisbury, Ringwood, or anywhere else, every effort great or small is welcomed by all those who care. Those people have all played their part in raising the profile of what was a problem and more importantly done something about it.

I agree it has a very long way to go before the roach fishing is like it was in the eighties and nineties. I know, I was also there a little bit and saw what the Avon could do. I cupped it in my hands.

But we now travel to the Avon with hope, when for many years that seemed impossible.

I hope one day I can say the same about the Wensum, and the indications are positive. Here’s one from Sunday.



One thing is for sure, we all love roach!

[Ally]

Ignorance is bliss - the world goes on and on!

~This why the Roach project is soo special! ~

?? You mean the arp is ignorant or everyone else

[Tengisgol]

”Well I dunno. I havent seen any reports about reduced numbers and fish numbers go up and down anyway so whos to say stocking has made any difference. I know my club has done a lot of stocking but doesnt seem to make any difference in the long run.”

I am no scientist or biologist etc. but one of the quite startling findings of the ARP work, they will say, and in tandem with the EA, is something this...

As I understand it, they will say that if you stock a river with roach from another water they won’t synchronise in their spawning with the indigenous roach and, in fact, that introduction risks wrecking the delicate balance of what roach are left. For example, it was strongly recommended that roach from the pits that adjoin the Wensum aren’t netted and reintroduced to the river, notwithstanding that they were ‘Wensum roach’ to begin with. A few years and generations out of the river and they will have changed genetically. Yes, there will be a spike in the fishing short term but it is said those fish won’t spawn or spawn anywhere near as successfully as the resident roach at best, and at worst can in fact cause a final crash of the residential population longer term.

Hence the reason why ARP were very careful to ensure that the Avon roach hatched out were placed back in the river as soon as it was felt that they were large enough to have increased the pool of roach capable of surviving and reproducing.

There are some incredible and almost unexplainable phenomena that have been observed. The roach triggered spawning all along the river - separated by weirs and many miles - at exactly the same day/time, and for six out of seven years, on exactly the same date of the year. This, notwithstanding different weather and water temperatures from year to year and reach to reach.

Wonders of the natural world it would seem that we cannot easily explain...

I must stress I am only repeating what we’ve been told, and I can’t stand over any of this personally, but a book is in the making and I think it may prove to be the new benchmark on the subject.

It is this kind of knowledge that we were potentially ignorant of, myself for certain, and nothing more. Not ignorant as individuals but just not understanding the impacts of our previous actions and long held beliefs.

At the moment this ‘evidence’ is scattered about if you want to research, so it will be fascinating to read into this when it all becomes readily available in a book to the likes of myself, just an office guy who likes roach and fishing for them.

I hope this helps.

[Ally]

Seems sensible if your going to stock to use fish from the same river, though then you have to take them out to stock dont you. Assumes you can do a better job than nature. Anyway Daceace put it better than i can. Seems quite a bit of ignorance all around the arp.