Molesey Eel trap results 2013

All been backing up stuck below the weir I guess, a bit of flow down the pipe and woomph!  up they come.  An indication of just how impassable those weirs must be.

Wondering whether they secrete anything to attract the others, so once one finds a route they all tend to follow?

Do we actually need to check it every day until things quieten down a bit?

The checking days now its livened up should be Sat, Tues, Thurs. That's worked well last year.

I am working the next few weekends so can cover midweek with whoever is around.

Keith can you leave Friday so whoever makes it down on Saturday will hopefully get some hands on experience at last

Cheers

ok

I can fill in if there's a day someone can't do.

Got to get those precious babies freed to continue their magical journey  

Ed Randall wrote:

Its all going crazy.

The scientist in me is wondering what it was about this weekend that meant they all came in en-masse. I wonder what the tides were doing last week, and I wonder what the weir was being run at over the weekend.

Darryl was wondering what tides we've had recently. Well, we had the biggest tide for a few months last week after the supermoon. Maybe they made use of that?

Amazing, more than double last year in 2 days.

Keith is meeting Joe tomorrow morning, should be able to learn what we do for the big catches, to be honest I was like a rabbit in headlights yesterday expecting one, finding a bucket load  

I will go down Thurs early ish if anyone fancies it. Steve would need to get you a session with Joe for annual H&S, can be anytime mate.

What time Thursday David?

Am planning to fish the lunchtime tide, so guess 9:30?

Gives a bit of time as counting and recording can be lengthy. Great we are even talking about it.

OK, see you at 9-30.

the Joe, the Jack and Me arrived at location had a cup of coffee first in cafe next to lock, then got down to bussness, we open the door expecting not 10, not 100's, but 1,ooo's of elvers,

got 44,

sow, sized them all up, around 3" average, one was a massave 4 and a bit inches and looking mean and ugly, so jack very carferly tipe them into the upper thames bit, and me and Joe, checked the entrance to trap, all clear, then I had a crafty look back in the trap, and strick me with with a blot of lighting out of the blue, 3 more elvers were in the trap, so we left them in  for the next people to check,

happy elver finding

pics it follow










on our way back from the elvers finding, I NEARLY ran this poor fellow over on me trusty steed, just managed to miss him, so picked him up and put him into the Thames in the edge, he swam strate out into the deeper water and low and behold, a 3Ib perch had him for dinner/

funny, ant it, Life that is,  

safe to say his time was destined to be up today - by bike, perch, or another means

From Joe, a date for your diary:
Lots of elver movement at the moment . Yesterday we had 200 at Molesey , 15 on the Brent and this morning I’ve just been told of 1600 on the Medway!

October 18th is the date for this year’s Eel forum at London Zoo. Everyone involved in the monitoring is invited. Please put it in your diaries and I’ll send more information nearer the time.

Dave & I visited the lock this morning and at first it looked like the glut was over. After lifting the trap out and tapping the tubes we could only see about half a dozen small eels. However, a firm tap on the end of the trap revealed quite a few more. Then David had the idea of netting the outer tank, mainly to remove a lot of the silt that had collected and this produced even more. In the end we counted 45 eels between 65 and 90 mm. There was also one small, soon to be ex, mitten crab.



But the surprise of the morning was the discovery of 2 tiny bullheads. How they managed to get up through the bristles is a mystery? Or did they swim down the hosepipe? Pictured here along with a mayfly?

Ed Randall wrote:

Yesterday we had 200 at Molesey , 15 on the Brent and this morning I’ve just been told of 1600 on the Medway!

Does anyone have any theories yet why there's so many compared to last year?

How about "That's nature for you".

Most species are cyclical, think how many species seem to almost disappear out of a river and then, after a few years, there's thousands of them.

No check Friday as want you Saturday Eels ticklers to have some fun.

Who will be there

the Jack and me will be, plus get some fishing in, on lock, while the water levels are low, carch some of them chub we saw a few years ago, is it 1000hrs

Saw some in the shallows just above Benson lock on the way down this morning,had to do a double take but deffo baby Eels

Yesterday I went on a school field trip to the Loddon. We did some kick sampling and caught a couple of small bullheads like the ones in the pic. We also saw a whole shoal of them of about 20 strong.

So who is at Molesey tomorrow folks, Ed, Alex? Keith will be fishing as noted so is there

10:30 as normal.

I will be absent due to working.

Sorry can't do tomorrow. May be able to have a look in on Sunday.

The Alex, the Jack plus me found 44 little baby Eels, (Elvers), pics to follow

biggish wax 105.02mm long and smallest was 61.06mm long:P 

Remarkable week, thats around 650 in 5 days   

Big tides next week will bring more   

 19 in the trap today, who is around for Weds?