Dry January?

It looks as if this will be yet another week when the weather has conspired to prevent any fishing on our lovely colourful river. It's a respite from the Winter Fishers for the poor fish of course, so long as they can find somewhere to cling on as the torrents scour their way down the riverbed. I trust that the Refuge on beat 3a is doingt its job for the little fish who found their way there.

The level did drop almost enough to fish a week ago, but it was still a bit high (over 40) and almost too murky for the fish to see a nymph, even a flourescent squirmy. No chance of that today, and the forecast is for 2.5m tomorrow (though the forecasts are invariably inaccurate). This was the river a few days ago.

Really not much point fishing in that I suggest, but that's why we have the Reservoir.

I was a bit surprised to find that we've only had 2 visits to the Reservoir this year, and only 4 in the previous two months! I can't help thinking that some people may have fished there but forgotten to put in a Catch Return, perhaps because they blanked.

You should know that we stocked quite a few trout in there last Autumn, and that Nigel, alone and and with various workparties has put in a great deal of effort to keep the banks accessible, and there are various initiatives to try and control the summer weed. If it really is as infrequently used as the Catch Returns suggest, then we are wasting a lot of funds and resources for the benefit of just a handful of members.

I hate to sound preachy, but please do send in a Return if you visit the Reservoir, and even backdated ones are fine if you've just remembered now. Knowing how much it is used is far more important than how many fish were caught (or not), so please,

if you go, let us know.

It is, of course, open to all members 365 days a year, so you don't need to be a Winter Fisher to use it now. I'm not going to say that we all need to use it or lose it, but there may come a day when we have to make hard decisions about resources, so it'd be good to have the data to inform such a debate.

Sermon over, and commiserations to any of you who suffered from the recent drinking water outage, but best to fill up the rainwater butts tomorrow, just in case it happens again. I can't help wondering about the competence of the responsible organisation, when I reflect on the current weather and the fact that we still have a hosepipe ban! It's a funny old world.

Cheers

PeterB