SHOCK CLOSURE OF QUAY SPORTS ANNOUNCED

North Devon’s anglers will be shocked and saddened by the closure of Quay Sports. The shop has been a real boon to angling in North Devon over the past three years and its closure will certainly have a detrimental impact. I wish all at the Quay Sports the best for the future.

Due to rising costs and diminishing brand supplier margins the Quay Sports Fishing Tackle store will be closing permanently on Friday 5th July 2024.
The import, retail and wholesale side of the business will continue as normal as we have done for many years and we will look to expand this side of the business.
Gift cards will need to be redeemed in store prior to end of day Friday 5th of July 2024.
We will continue to stock bait up until this date.
We will be discounting ALL of the stock as from today by 10% so please pop in for a bargain.
Shop opening hours will be Monday to Friday 9am till 5pm until closure.
We would like to thank all of our customers for their support over the last 3 years.

 

Stafford Moor Silvers Festival 2024

March Silvers Festival 2024 worthy winner at Stafford Moor winner was Ryan Shipp who scored a perfect 4 with a total weight of 178lb 6oz a huge well done to you Ryan.

In 2nd place was Geoff Vallence with a score of just 5 points and totall weight of 118lb 1oz.

In 3rd place was John Fuidge with 6 points and a total weight of 168lb 15oz.

Also John Fuidge won the largest weight of the week with 67lb 2oz from peg 11 on Woodpecker on day one.

 

 

SEA ANGLING CATCHES

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Bidefords March  48-hour results.

1st Andrew Clements  Bull Huss 12lb 9oz 125.625%

2nd Graham Snow  Thicklipped Mullet 3lb 6oz 84.375%

3rd Graham Snow Thicklipped Mullet 3lb 4oz 81.250% 

Bull huss from Ilfracombe

Combe Martin SAC member Paul Lorrimore landed a personal best bull huss of 12lb 5oz whilst fishingf an Ilfracombe shore mark.

 

Combe Martin SAC Junior member Lenny Lake fished from John Barbeary’s Bluefin out of ilfracombe to boat a fine bull huss of 12lb 2oz.

Billy Evans won Appledore Shipbuilders league competition with a smoothound of 9lb 6oz. Andrew Atkinson was runner up with a smoothound of 9lb 0.25oz and Graham Snow third with a thick lipped grey mullet of 3lb 6oz.

WARNING – A SINISTER LURKING DANGER – PLEASE READ !

Many thanks to Richard Wilson for sharing his monthly prose on North Devon Angling News. I would urge all who tread upon our green and pleasant land to read this article. I have had many encounters with ticks over the years. When fishing some of our overgrown rivers I have returned home later in the day to find these nasty critters sinking there teeth into my skin. Its a bit like Russian roulette some are loaded with deadly lymes disease whilst others are not carriers. I have heard of several people who have been infected and we constantly remove them from our cat. Others find them in abundance upon their dogs. Awareness is undoubtedly a major factor in getting treated but thats not always straight forward as Richard explains below. 

https://fishrise.substack.com

Lyme Disease: Running Riot

I’ve got it, you may have it too.

This is a good time to be a tick with Lyme Disease to share. You and I may bemoan the weirdness of the weather, but ticks love it.

As the world gets warmer and wetter, they’re partying. 10 years ago, in the wooded valley I call home, we had two distinct tick seasons – from mid-March to June, and a shorter burst in the autumn. Last year I picked up my first in early February and my dog had his last in November, and they continued without a break right through summer.

Ticks are the original muggers. They lurk on the tips of grass fronds, often in and around woodland, waiting for an unwitting victim to brush past. They’re looking for a free meal which, for us, turns into a lose-lose transaction. The tick gets our blood and we get Lyme Disease, a bacterial infection with very unpleasant consequences.

I’ve been paying attention to this because I’ve just been diagnosed with Lyme. Worse, I’ve had it untreated for about 8 years, which is why I can also say that most doctors wouldn’t recognise it even if they caught it, and that I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.

There are two basics to understand about Lyme Disease, and they come hand-in-glove: An early diagnosis is both essential and very hard to get. Speed is everything because, given the chance, there’s no organ in your body or corner of your central nervous system that the Lyme bacteria won’t vandalise.

So how do you know if you’ve been exposed? A lot of people never see the tick that infects them. It can latch on at 1mm long, infect and then fall off. Others gorge themselves, growing bloated with their head buried in your flesh. The longer they stay, the greater your risk of infection. Thankfully, dog tick removers do a great job for us too.

The official advice is that the first visual clue of infection is a circular red rash around the site of a tick bite. This is where the medical profession starts to screw up.

In 2016 I had a tick bite and circular rash which I took into my doctor’s surgery. The nurse said it wasn’t Lyme (it was solid red from centre to edge and didn’t match the bull’s eye photo on her screen). No treatment was offered and, back then, I was as clueless as the nurse. I now know that anysort of rash or blistering (no rash) that might be tick-related should be treated as Lyme Disease. I also know that many Lyme cases never show a rash or blisters.

For patients and doctors, it gets worse. Blood tests, if done at all, deliver false positives and negatives in equal numbers in up to 25% cases. So even if a doctor suspects Lyme, and mostly they don’t, the test results are very likely to be wrong.

The next problem is your doctor. Once the bacteria get to work, your symptoms will be mistaken for heart disease, flu, a mild stroke, dementia, diabetic neuropathy, fatigue syndrome, Bells Palsy, arthritis, all manner of intestinal and organ malfunctions, viral infections, Parkinson’s, slacking and so on. Victims are constantly exhausted and, in my experience, at times look unevenly grey. This last blotchy observation is not in the textbooks – it should be.

There is no slam-dunk symptom for doctors to see that couldn’t be something more familiar. And to get an idea of what’s familiar, a quick look around their waiting room is revealing. The majority of patients are obese and bring diabetes, coronary heart disease and the such-like. Those who are not obese are mostly old with all that goes with advancing years. There are a small number of children with sniffles and one or two adults who’ve lost arguments with power tools. There are super-size chairs, but no dispensers of free tick removers and no warning signs or leaflets on how to avoid Lyme. It’s invisible.

Stand in most doctor’s surgeries and you’d never guess that Lyme Disease is the most prevalent insect/parasite-borne disease in North America and Europe and one of the fastest-growing infectious diseases in both. That’s big. According to the CDC, almost 500,000 Americans get it every year. Many, many more in both North America and Europe are infected but undiagnosed. There’s a lot of trouble coming for a lot of people.

Here’s why it took 8 years for me to get treatment: As said above, I first went to my doctor’s surgery in 2016 with a circular red rash caused by a tick. Patients treated with antibiotics at this stage mostly complete a fast 100% recovery, which is why medical guidelines say treat first and confirm the diagnosis second. Antibiotics are very low risk, but the consequences of delaying treatment are serious. In my case, medical ignorance delivered the wrong diagnosis.

The trouble started slowly. Within 2 years the fatigue, aches and pains were worryingly intrusive. Multiple trips to the doctor, scans and tests revealed nothing. Increasingly worried, I remembered the tick rash and asked for a Lyme test. It came back negative. Nobody told me how inaccurate the tests were, and still are.

Fast forward through many more scans, tests, a gall bladder removal that was supposed to resolve my woes (and didn’t), a 2nd negative Lyme test and more. I was a minor medical mystery. Then, this autumn, I paid for a 3rd test and it came back positive. The next day my doctor re-tested with both the standard LISA test and a Western Immuno Blot test. Both came back positive. 3 positives in a week, including a Western Immuno Blot, is as good as a positive diagnosis gets.

Such a late discovery brings problems. Given time Lyme bacteria also attack and disrupt our Autonomic nervous system which controls all those things that just happen without conscious thought: Blood pressure, breathing, heart rate, digestion and so on. They also disrupt our short-term memory, which is why, if I stop to make a coffee, I may have to remind myself that I’m writing about Lyme. That’s very disconcerting. Weirdly, I don’t forget why I culled an adjective or shunted a sub-clause down a paragraph. It’s also why my blood pressure can veer from 180:140 to 80:50 and my heart sometimes sounds like Animal, the Muppets drummer, playing deranged rhythms with one hand. And as medications are added to treat the symptoms, so cause and effect get complicated.

If getting a diagnosis is difficult then getting rid of Lyme is even harder. Symptoms can persist long after the antibiotic course is completed and the longer you’ve had the disease, the longer they’ll last. When this happens researchers are very careful to refer to Post Treatment Lyme, and not Long-or Chronic-Lyme. This may sound like semantics, but it’s important.

I have been treated with 2 courses of antibiotics (the sledgehammer and then pile-driver versions) and it’s extremely unlikely that any of the bacteria have survived this onslaught. They’re dead. So now I’m living with the damage the Lyme bacteria have done, especially to my nervous system. I felt like sh*t then, and still feel it now. Mending this could take years.

Imagine a human-scale version of a deserted battlefield. The war is over, the armies have gone home and all that remains is a landscape of devastation and dysfunction. Eventually, the land will recover, the trees will grow back and any unexploded munitions will be removed. How long will this take? We don’t know. Welcome to Post Treatment Lyme Disease.

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A Footnote: Whole-genome sequencing of Borrelia burgdorferi, the tick-borne bacterium that causes Lyme Disease, has shown a huge range in variety and complexity. This is thought to explain the multiple Lyme disease symptoms, from severe arthritis in children to fatigue and debilitating joint, neurological, and cardiovascular impacts in adults.

For further reading, I recommend the Lyme specialists at Johns Hopkinsand Harvard.

Soon there will be a vaccine (it’s in Stage 3 trials). And about time too.

 

 

MAKO SHARK BOOK LAUNCH

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’! ’ book launch and mako shark talk event:
With the eagerly awaited book launching next week, you are invited to come along to the signing event by the author, Ian Harbage, which will be followed by a presentation and a Q&A on mako sharks by marine biologist, Dr Simon Thomas.
The event will be held at ( ), , at on
It’ll be an open house and anyone is welcome to join. The Heritage Centre cafe will be open for anyone that would like teas, coffees, or perhaps even something a little stronger! While there are not many copies of the book left, a few will made available for the event for anyone still wishing to purchase a copy

Sam Fenner Environment Agency Fishery Officer

Sam Fenner Environment Agency Fishery Enforcement Officer

Sam Fenner the Environment Agency’s North Devon fishery enforcement officer is keen to engage with the local angling community and has recently attended several club AGMs.

Sam previously worked in Scotland gaining valuable experience working with the farming community in byelaw enforcement. He brings this extensive knowledge to his role in North Devon that involves a wide patchwork of rural landscape.

( Above) Paul Carter a previous Fishery Enforcement Officer has worked closely with Sam to pass knowledge gained from years of experience whilst working across North Devon.

I joined him for a walk along the River East Lyn one of North Devon’s most beautiful and historic rivers. It was early March when we met and the river was running high and clear after one of the wettest February’s on record.

The salmon fishing season commences on March 1st on the Environment Agency’s day ticket fishery. Trout fishing starts on March 15th. The salmon run generally gets underway in late April or May if conditions are suitable with the river very dependent on rain.

The dramatic decline of salmon was very much top of the agenda as we walked the river. Having fished the Lyn intensively in the 1980s I have many good memories of those days of plenty. Though when I talked with anglers back then the fishing was still just a shadow of its glory days in the fifties and sixties.

The water quality of the East Lyn is undoubtedly still good as there is no extensive agricultural pollution. Poaching is no longer a significant problem on the Lyn so the main issues facing its salmon and sea trout are undoubtedly survival at sea and predation.

The Lyn offers superb fishing for abundant wild brown trout at a very reasonable cost of around £5.00 per day. Tickets are available from Barbrook Filling Station.

We started our walk at Torrs Road and walked up to Ash Bridge half a mile above Watersmeet. I was able to relay plenty of stories relating to the Lyn and we paused at Overflow and Vellacott’s Pool both of which have a rich history. The recent decimation caused by ash die back is plain to see on the rivers banks and this has undoubtedly been a major issue for the National Trust. Sadly some pools that were prime salmon holding pools are now difficult to access with some angler’s paths now overgrown.

We sighted a pair of goosander above Watersmeet a species that undoubtedly predate on smolts and salmon parr within the river.

The boulder strewn river was as beautiful as ever and I look forward to returning its banks with the fly rod later in the Spring when its crimson spotted trout offer exciting sport.

Sam talked of the challenging role of being fishery enforcement officer. He is very keen to encourage more anglers to enjoy the superb fishing the Lyn has to offer.

Rod licence checking is one of Sam’s main roles, he also works to enforce local byelaws, assist with pollution incidents. Offers advice to fishery owners and clubs regarding stocking and fish health, promotes angling and its mental health and community benefits in conjunction with the Angling Trust. Sam also works with the D&S IFCA in carrying out estuary protection work.

Sam’s area consists of all of North Devon and its rivers and stillwater’s. Quite a challenge if you consider that there were up to eight fishery enforcement officers during past decades.

After walking the river we adjourned to the National Parks Pavilion Centre for a coffee and a chat with Julian Gurney who has a wealth of experience in relation to the River Lyn and its history. Julian has written a piece for the Exmoor Magazine that includes the fascinating history of fish traps at the mouth of the Lyn and the coastline.

The old salmon trap situated at the mouth of the River Lyn.

Sam urged that any signs of pollution or poaching should be reported to the Environment Agency via their hotline : 0800 80 70 60