John Bailey: An angler’s A-Z of rivers today

My degree was in History, Classics and Fishing so anything I say as a layman might incur the wrath of the 'professionals'. I still believe the views of us old anglers who have spent long lifetimes peering into water have validity, however cross we might make the professors.

Anaerobic Digesters - it could just be that the development of ADs with their ability to turn chicken and cow manure into a cheap, phosphate light fertiliser might go a long way to solving over-enrichment which causes horrendous river algal blooms come summer.

Beavers, burbot and the like - whatever the arguable benefits of beavers, the money, effort and talk time they consume surely diverts attention from more important challenges. Let’s keep conservation real and be done with hifalutin claptrap.

Stunning weed growth where canoes are restricted (Image: John Bailey)

Canoes - not being a miserable old, smelly angler, but the damage they do to upper rivers is incalculable. Weed, spawning redds and wildlife are all destroyed by paddlers. There’s a reluctance to face the facts, but unpopular truths must be told. Education and water use concordats are essential.

Diffuse Water Pollution - our rivers are suffering from contamination of every conceivable sort, even the commercial washing of watercress and the making of cheese! There simply have to be punishments to fit the crimes.

Environment Agency - I think there are some great people working here, but they are stymied by cumbersome bureaucracy, an over-emphasis on health and safety and flagrant wasting of resources. Most agree unfit for purpose.

Fish In Need (check out the charity of the same name!) - When it comes to conservation, fish are bottom of the pile. Naturalist Trusts nationwide place more emphasis on slow worms than salmon. As a nation we have to realise fish play an essential part.

Global warming and scorching summers - They are killing our over-abstracted rivers. They highlight the fact that we have done nothing for decades to conserve water in reservoirs, or even repair leaks. Years of opportunity have been frittered away.

Habitat, habitat, habitat - fishery scientist dogma these past years has blinded us to the fact that habitat is vital, but just part of the picture and not the whole solution to our problems.

Industry - has to play a major part in the saving of our rivers and appreciate the commercial and PR benefits that can result. Money talks.

Joined up thinking - whichever river catchment you look at, there is a clamour of voices competing to be heard and a babble of pressure groups wanting their own way. Common sense and consensus are essential to achieve anything.

Kormorants - sorry about the spelling and even more saddened about the carnage they inflict on fish between two ounces and two pounds. A curse ignored by everybody but us anglers who really do see the damage done.

Lamprey - the sea variety and twaite shad too. These are red list fish species in freefalling numbers and again, no one is even aware. Talk about canaries in a gas-ridden mine chirping to be heard!

Mills - have been part of the upper river landscape since Domesday yet the EA would do away with them. Is there truly a proven reason for this? Surely mills provide the varied face of rivers that anglers and fish love?

Natural England, Natural Resources Wales, the EA, Defra, River Trusts and Foundations and on and on it goes - so many organisations, so much talk, so little positive action of any real note. Once again, let’s scrap the cacophony and invest in fewer and more sensible bodies that actually do something... and listen to anglers with their ear to the water.

Otters - do eat fish, but the damage they do to water fowl is enormous. Voles too. It is typical of the bland Country File approach to conservation that uncomfortable facts are whitewashed away.

Parliament - local MPs smile sympathetically but rivers are way down the Westminster list of priorities and all they are happy to do is talk. Rivers are our lifeblood not bankers’ bonuses.

Raw sewage - we have all seen it being pumped into rivers by water companies that have simply not invested as they should have. Privatisation has been an unmitigated disaster and prosecutions have been pusillanimous at best.

Stocking - is a dirty word amongst virtually every fishery scientist, yet in my lifetime the Wensum profited from massive introductions of roach in the 1960s. No fish? Put them in!

I’m running out of my allotted words so I’ll cut to the quick. Skylarks, lapwings, water voles, water crowfoot weed, tench and wild brown trout, we are losing the lot. We are at a X-roads. Yellow Brick Road, that’s what the upper Yare will look like if abstraction isn’t controlled. Zoos - that’s where we’ll be seeing our fish if those laughably called in charge continue in their indolent ways.