EA Fish Survey Month

September is a big month on the Environment Agencies calender with fish surveys taking place up and down the Thames

Tomorrow the the EA are electro fishing from Shepperton to Sunbury and Wednesday Sunbury to Molesey. The TAC have been fortunate to be invited out to assist and report back the process and of course take lots of great pictures.

The tidal survey dates are as below and there are on the foreshore, if anyone wants to get down and see what they do, offer assistance of just say hello, be very welcome;

27/09 Richmond
28/09 Kew
29/09 Chiswick
30/09 Battersea
04/10 West Thurrock
05/10 Greenwich
11/10 Mucking
12/10 Denton

The exact area of each survey will be posted nearer the time

hi all .not too bothered about times however are the dates correct, i might be able to get to thurrock on the 4th oct

Admin wrote:

The TAC have been fortunate to be invited out to assist and report back the process and of course take lots of great pictures.

Can't wait for the write up and pics Dave - very interesting the surveys :study:

andy that'd be pukka m8, we would ideally like a club member or two at all of 'em
can make the first three, but battersea and downstream I cant

Andy the dates look correct, will confirm exact locations nearer the time. If you can get down and want to see what happens, here is your chance folks.

I am extremly concerned about the effect of electrofishing on small fry, I regularly fish Thames weirs etc. and usualy see the margins teeming with tiddlers.
However I have noticed over a period of several years that the day after electro-fishing the tiddlers have mostly dissappeared and do not return, I do not believe that this is coincidence, and I strongly suspect that the process of electrofishing kills them, and because they are so small it goes unnoticed!
I have spoken to other anglers who also think that this is the case.
Please could this be checked and if possible reduce the voltage to a non harmfull level.

John PW Keating wrote:

I am extremly concerned about the effect of electrofishing on small fry, I regularly fish Thames weirs etc. and usualy see the margins teeming with tiddlers.
However I have noticed over a period of several years that the day after electro-fishing the tiddlers have mostly dissappeared and do not return, I do not believe that this is coincidence, and I strongly suspect that the process of electrofishing kills them, and because they are so small it goes unnoticed!
I have spoken to other anglers who also think that this is the case.
Please could this be checked and if possible reduce the voltage to a non harmfull level.

Good first post John, interesting...I wonder if we can get an answer from the EA on it.

First hand experience today and saw no ill affects on Roach under 30mm. It is a question the TAC will ask anyway.

nice one buddy, a pukka question

Admin wrote:

The tidal survey dates are as below and there are on the foreshore, if anyone wants to get down and see what they do, offer assistance of just say hello, be very welcome;

27/09 Richmond
28/09 Kew
29/09 Chiswick
30/09 Battersea
04/10 West Thurrock
05/10 Greenwich
11/10 Mucking
12/10 Denton

The exact area of each survey will be posted nearer the time

I can probably get to Thurrock and Mucking, might be a chance to hand over those few bits and pieces I have for TAC..........................

A few taster pictures from todays survey. The full report will be up tonight. And yes its another Pike inside that mouth...

Today's survey - where was that? - it's the 13/9 that's not on the list!

I DEFINITELY know that swim! A few of us have fished it very recently for barbel and chub. We knew they were there...we couldn't catch them

Right and wrong, yes you know the swim, BUT, we were only moored there processing and the fish caught in a different area. The same goes with every picture posted up, sorry. Plus the fish are not all from just one stop. Bar Sunbury weir which is in one picture, didnt even see the boom boat in action, just not how it works fella.

Ed these are different as boat surveys, the dates posted are shore surveys. The dates were up a little while ago.

Cheers

only one space on the boat chaps, so dave was the TAC man

I am pleased that small fish have been seen to seemingly recover after electro-fishing; however I often fish the days after the electro-fishing has been carried out, the margins that were teeming with fry the day before electro-fishing are devoid of small fry the days after this has been carried out! I can only presume that although all fish are carefully returned alive and apparently unharmed, they died within hours of the electro-fishing. I do not think predation could explain their disappearance. Sadly the shoals do not return.
I feel that this is worthy of research.

Hi John

The question has been sent the EA, so will report back.

Cheers

John PW Keating wrote:

I am extremly concerned about the effect of electrofishing on small fry, I regularly fish Thames weirs etc. and usualy see the margins teeming with tiddlers.
However I have noticed over a period of several years that the day after electro-fishing the tiddlers have mostly dissappeared and do not return, I do not believe that this is coincidence, and I strongly suspect that the process of electrofishing kills them, and because they are so small it goes unnoticed!
I have spoken to other anglers who also think that this is the case.
Please could this be checked and if possible reduce the voltage to a non harmfull level.

Could not agree more with that John, in some ways they really do not have a clue, maybe the EA should try clearing dead lines from the river (I removed 7 last week) or doing some patrols instead of Electro fishing it for pointless surveys. Electro fishing a fishing a river like the Thames is TOTALLY useless anyway for information purposes. You are either going to get a shed load of fish, or none at all, how does this show what is in the river in any useful way by going to a weir pool & stunning what fish are in there? What do they get that they did not already know? Erm yes there is Barbel, Roach, Chub, Carp etc etc. Could of told them that without the need to waste a load of money in the process & possibly be killing the fry & generally upsetting the fish for no good reason. I can tell you now when they stunned the fish in Sutton to get the Sutton fishes spawn for breeding purposes afterwards one of the best fish in there the Searcher (in TH's first book) was lost as a result... That was a near 40lb carp, what chance do fry stand?

Apologies to anyone who is friends with these people, but after many years of watching them sail up & down the river in their boat looking all important, I have still failed to ever have my Licence checked, & you would not believe how much I have fished it. IMO for many years the EA have just been a Tax on anglers, a Tax that often goes into "projects" that are so anti angling it defies belief. This year I have been fishing up in Cambridgeshire on a pit called Fen Drayton, that general area has been devastated by Otters, Otters at the end of the day that are paid for by the local anglers through their licence. In some ways you really could not make it up... I understand that as an organisation the TAC may have close ties with the EA, so again apologies, but as an angler of 30+ years, they do not really come up to scratch in terms of looking after us as anglers (who basically fund them)


Maybe a bit controversial, but in a lot of ways they really make my blood boil!

Fair play mate, its all about opinion. and thats what makes it good.

Wanted to just pick on the enforcement side, it is a huge issue and no doubt underfunded and under manned.

What we have done with the guardian scheme is get intelligence back to the EA about hot spots and any poaching etc. Let us know if you see anything, it will get followed up, that works. The Angling Tr have put forward plans about a volunteer enforcement scheme and think that is moving forward. More can be found on this link. Being eyes and ear is what the TAC have doing for a while so need info.

http://www.gofishing.co.uk/Angling-Times/Section/News--Catches/General-News/October-2010/Angling-Trust-draws-up-proposals-for-volunteer-policing/

On the Thames in terms of fry, I dont know any answer but in perspective, the Thames Water abstraction inlets are by far the biggest killer of all fish, even tidal pollution

David Harvey wrote:

Fair play mate, its all about opinion. and thats what makes it good.

Wanted to just pick on the enforcement side, it is a huge issue and no doubt underfunded and under manned.

What we have done with the guardian scheme is get intelligence back to the EA about hot spots and any poaching etc. Let us know if you see anything, it will get followed up, that works. The Angling Tr have put forward plans about a volunteer enforcement scheme and think that is moving forward. More can be found on this link. Being eyes and ear is what the TAC have doing for a while so need info.


On the Thames in terms of fry, I dont know any answer but in perspective, the Thames Water abstraction inlets are by far the biggest killer of all fish, even tidal pollution

Oh don't get me started on Thames water David, they are even lower down the list for me. They literally run the river dry these days, I could tell you some scary stories about just how much I have seen them drop the river level in one night many years ago, literally like a plug was pulled.

In fairness a lot of what I wrote above RE the river mate was experiences from before the TAC was set up, so maybe I should not judge to much till I have seen more recent goings on from the river. Hopefully since you guys inception there is a more proactive approach from the powers that be towards the Thames.

I will be about on the river a fair bit, I will happily pass on any info on that side of things. William Hill dictate that I get a fair amount of time to fish =)

PM me a number David...

Will do fella

Here another snippet picked up of FM, intersting reading...

http://www.fishingmagic.com/news_events/news/15368-rod-licence-evasion-–-thames-anglers-top-the-list.html

Updated Tidal dates.

Feel free to pop donw and see whats going on, with the major sewage issues this summer, going to be interesting results:

27/9 Richmond (White Cross pub) 11am on site
28/9 Kew (Cafe Rouge at Strand-on-the-Green) 12pm on site
29/9 Chiswick (Chiswick Eyot) 12pm on site
30/9 Battersea (slipway off Battersea Church Rd) 11:30am on site
4/10 West Thurrock (Wharf Pub) 12pm on site
5/10 Greenwich (Naval College) 2pm on site
11/10 Mucking (Stanford-le-Hope nature reserve TQ 704 812) 12pm on site
12/10 Denton (Ship & Lobster Pub) 13.30pm on site

Just to add for anyone going, as I found out last year those times are 'sharp'. Due to the tides they don't hang about.

John

We have had a reply from the Environment Agency to your question, hope its help



The effect of electric fishing on fish has been extensively researched, and the main findings with regard to reducing its effect on juvenile (0+) fish are that a large anode surface area should be used together with a low pulse frequency (number of electrical pulses per second).

On the Thames our boat is fitted with large anodes that subsequently have a large surface area. This creates a less concentrated electrical field that is kinder to fish, but does make it less effective at capturing 0+ fish that have a small body surface area. We also use a pulse frequency of 50hZ (or 50 pulses per second) rather than 100hZ, which also has less effect on 0+ fish. Based on the way our boat is setup I would say that most of the fry you have seen in the margins probably did not actually get captured, but maybe you could let me know the exact area of river you are referring to and I can look into this more closely?

Another thing with our technique on the Thames is that we often cannot get very close in to the banks due to the depth, and it would generally be the shallower margins that I would associate with large numbers of fry. While it seems it would be too coincidental for it to occur at the exact same time as our fish surveys, it is around this time of year when the water temperature beings to drop that small fish move out of shallower areas in search of warmer water.

a big up to the guys'n'gals of the EA, for taking the time to respond