Seasons End at the Half Moon Inn
The seasons end comes all too soon and it seemed surreal to be walking through the familiar doors of the Half Moon Inn at Sheepwash for the Torridge Rivers Association end of season Egg Box Dinner. The Torridge Fishery Association was formed back in 1979 with a young Charles Inniss at its helm. Forty five years later Charles is still very much the engine room of the Association and continues to welcome anglers to the Half Moon Inn with his cheery demeanour and resilient optimism.
The new owners of the Half Moon have wisely embraced Charles and Adam who has worked behind the bar for many years. A fascinating insight into the Half Moon can be gleaned by listening to the latest Fly Culture Podcast with Pete Tyjas. Interviewing Richard Miller.
It has been a difficult salmon fishing season across North Devon and the chalked writing on the Inns blackboard told a woeful tale.
Sea trout numbers were not so bad and the brown trout returns very encouraging with close to five hundred brown trout recorded. In fact the general consensus is that the wild brown trout fishing is the future for North Devon’s rivers.
The annual dinner sees those with a deep love of the Torridge travel from all over the UK. It is always a joy to sit with fellow Torridge fishers and hear stories from the water’s edge told with a burning passion that flows through generations.
There was of course much talk about the sad demise of salmon across the UK and beyond with the complexities and causes of this debated over plates of delicious food, wine and ale.
Charles Inniss gave a short humorous and impassioned introduction to Lord Clinton who has taken on the role of Torridge Rivers Association President.
A Memorial Service for the late Lord Clinton was held on July 15th at Exeter Cathedral. It was attended by Association Chairman Paul Ashworth and his wife Geraldine along with Charles Inniss and Steve Phelps. Lord Clinton was the prime mover in the creation of the Association and was its first Chairman and President for Forty years.
The Grand Egg Box Draw once again raised considerable funds towards the running of the associations hatchery a project that requires much work and dedication and rewards with a glimmer of hope for the future.
Before I sat down to write this I walked out into the garden and smelt the comforting scent of woodsmoke drifting through the valley. Autumn has arrived and another salmon and trout season has drifted into the past. In less than six months anglers will once again be wading into those perpetual flows as yellow daffodils once again decorate the banks.
Lines will be cast and flies drifted in renewed hope for a true anglers optimism is both strong and resilient.
A FEW LAST CASTS
I had a few casts on a Middle Taw beat hoping that recent rain had encouraged a few salmon into the river. The river was surprisingly low with the rocks very slippery and covered in algae.
The colour was good yet I saw no signs of salmon as I fished down through the pools and runs.
A kingfisher flashed past, leaves drifted down as a breeze stirred the trees. Tell tale accumulations of leaves told the story of the changing season. Just five days remain of the Taw and Torridge salmon season.
Lower down the Taw Simon Hillcox tempted a beautiful salmon of around 7lb. like most salmon caught in recent days it was already decorated in Autumn hues a sign that it has been in the river for a while. The Torridge has risen more than the Taw and several salmon have been glimpsed and lost. The last week will hopefully see a few salmon tempted to be discussed at the annual egg box dinner at the Half Moon Inn.
Riverwoods Screening
Another chance to see this stunning and emotive film that tells of salmon decline and possible solutions. After the film I will talk about my own observations on the decline in North Devons rivers and James Thomas will talk about the work being undetaken by the National Trust across North Devon and beyond.
Salmon caught from Taw and Torridge
A rise in river levels following recent rainfall has encouraged anglers onto the regions rivers in the hope of salmon. James Lewis fished a middle Torridge beat and tempted a fine salmon estimated at 9lb. Another salmon estimated at 13lb was tempted from a middle Taw beat. Several other salmon have been seen migrating up river so there is hope that a few more will be tempted during the last two weeks of the season
I attended the West Country Rivers Trust CSI Volunteer Conference at High Bickington on Saturday September 14th. The event was well attended with enthusiastic volunteers from across the region. It is very encouraging to meet with a wide range of people with a passion for rivers. It is clear that there is a need for more coordination of effort between the many different groups that use the rivers a topic that was explored with future plans explained by speakers at the event. https://wrt.org.uk
Many at the event were not anglers and talking with several at the event my view that we need to work together for the good of the rivers was reinforced. Anglers, Canoeists, Wild Swimmers and conservationists all want clean water so we need to focus on our common goals and put our differences aside.
RIVER TAW FISHERIES & CONSERVATION ASSOCIATION – WEBSITE LAUNCH
Website Launch
We have had a long period with no communication as a result of technical problems with our website. The problem has finally been resolved. Richard Nickell gripped it and commissioned a new website with a new address: www.rtfca.co.uk:. This modernised, cleaner, sharper website has been launched to allow us to communicate again. I would like to thank Richard and our web designer Elizabeth Walsh (www.elizabeth-walsh.co.uk), who collaborated so effectively. Liz will hopefully boss us into more regular communications.
Click on image below for website :-
Landscape Recovery Scheme – Thoughts
We are working on the idea presented at the AGM and, steadily in the background, on a thoughts document. Ian Blewett’s continuing involvement in the North Devon Catchment Partnership helps us stay engaged with other stakeholders. Landscape Recovery projects require an energetic and enthusiastic farmer as a starting point; one has emerged. Large acreages need to be signed up to enable funding to be applied for. This appears to be happening. We are in discussions with the right partners to keep this ambitious and long-term opportunity in our sights. An overview of the Landscape Recovery Scheme is shown as an addendum to this letter.
Our river has many critical Biodiversity Action Plan (BAP) species, from our salmon and sea trout through to freshwater pearl mussels as well as increasing numbers of rarer species like shad and otters. There will be more and for those with time on their hands, do look at https://jncc.gov.uk/our-work/uk-bap-priority-species/and see if you can identify all the species we host in, on and above our catchment’s rivers. As regards UK fish species, it is likely we have 7 of the15 listed. These BAP species add weight to our application.
Sewage Treatment Works (STWs)
Alex Gibson has been waging war on South West Water because of the inadequate STW system in our catchment which is in part responsible for our water quality problems. We all know that the expansion of our towns and villages town puts additional pressure on already inadequate \\\\|\|||||AASTWs. Alex continues to harass SWW ,trying to hold them to account and pressurise them into cleaning up their act. South Molton and Chittlehamholt STWs appear to be the most problematic STWs at the moment, but there are shortcomings all across the Taw catchment which contains about 35 STWs. All these outflow into the Taw and its tributaries. Alex is putting together a table to show the sewage discharges in our catchment. This will be put on the website when finished. To see how the STW in your area has been performing go to The Rivers Trust website –
https://theriverstrust.org/sewage-map
– and check on their sewage map.
SHAD
As referred to earlier, shad are returning to our river and are useful as a lever to acquire funding and bring pressure to bear on improving the water quality in our river. You cannot legally target this rare species when you fish, but if you do by chance catch a shad please return it to the river as quickly as possible. If you keep catching them, I suggest you fish elsewhere on your beat. They won’t be there for long. Please report their presence and recover any dead shad you find for post mortem analysis as we need to prove they are spawning and demonstrate which species we have. We are confident we have the Allis shad; we may have Twaite shad as well.
Addendum
Landscape Recovery Scheme – Overview
There are 4 main distinguishing features of the Landscape Recovery Scheme:
- Large scale projects: the scheme is designed to deliver outcomes that require collaborative action across a big area, such as restoring ecological or hydrological function across a landscape.
- Long-term public funding (for example for 20years or longer); the scheme will support outcomes that take a long time to deliver, such as peatland restoration, woodland management or habitat restoration.
- Bespoke agreements: the scheme can fund activities that contribute to priority outcomes but are specific to the locality and so difficult to facilitate through other schemes.
- Blended funding: the features above and the provision of development funding should enable projects to attract private investment
Landscape Recovery projects will be selected in rounds, which will involve a competitive application process.
View From the River Bank
The regions rivers are still fairly low despite recent rain with small rises. Each rise brings the hope that a few salmon and sea trout will show but results are disappointing. To some extent of course catches are partially a result of reduced fishing effort and if anglers become disillusioned by a lack of fish and stop fishing then reports of fish dry up compounding the bleak picture.
Paul Carter tempted this superb looking wild brown trout from the River Taw. Paul was hoping for salmon following a small rise in the river following localised heavy rain. The numbers and size of brown trout in our rivers is a beacon of hope for the future showing that many of the problems regarding migratory species is related to survival at sea.
See below report from Don Hearn`
BARNSTAPLE AND DISTRICT ANGLING ASSOCIATION
NEWBRIDGE MID SEASON REPORT 5th July 2024
A difficult start again ,Too much water and now too little has resulted in just a few Salmon caught but more worrying ,hardly any sea trout. A few were caught on lures in March as expected , The Taw always seem to have a good early run of larger fish but It has been very quiet since..The Brown trout fishing is however thriving in lower waters and good fish up to and even over over 2lb have been reported .It seems more anglers are targeting the trout these days as the Salmon fishing becomes harder. It’s never easy anyway but the more you are there the luckier you get! At present the rain and tides have given the river a lift and it seem anything could happen on any visit. A 32” est. 13lb fish was taken by our Bailiff David Winter last week ,2 other smaller fish were caught earlier .and More are showing this week. A few sea trout have been caught and it is picking up but you have to lose your beauty sleep to find them. Interestingly, a few good size roach have been caught on a fly lately and it’s a reminder of the great roach fishing that used to exist on the Taw. The club has engaged again this year with the South West Rivers Trust regarding a Shad survey. This protected species has returned to the Taw after many years absence and has become an item of great interest. Any report of Shad either spawning, caught or found dead would be appreciated. Dead fish found should be retained if possible for collection (freezer) as the trust need evidence of spawning fish. This can add to the rivers status and it all helps in protecting our waterways, which do of course need all the help they can get these days.
Collection of Shad samples can be arrange by calling
Don Hearn on 07779619042
We were expecting support work , rock sacks etc, to be done to the banks alongside the railway swirlpool . This was supposed to start 16th June but apart from a few marking post nothing has happened. I will try and get some dates from the contractors and keep everyone posted as it may be a bit disruptive in that area for 2 weeks while the work progresses.
The club would like to thank you all for the continued support and hope a fish of a lifetime is waiting for you at Newbridge.
Don Hearn
Riverkeeper
Newbridge
I have made very few visits to the river so far this season and when I have visited I have been concerned at the lack of fish showing. The rocks within the river are very slippery and there is considerable sediment present which should clear to some extent when we get a big spate. The river is as always a pleasure to visit and you never know what success a visit will bring.
Norway: Wild salmon numbers crash
Many thanks to Richard Wilson for another thought provoking article. Click on link to read more of Richards articles.
Norway: Wild salmon numbers crash
The politics of profit before conservation.
The facts are indisputable. Norwegian salmon runs are shrinking dramatically. The Norwegian Environment Agency says this year’s run is a lot less than half of what it should be – and that 2023 was 30% down on 2022. This is a long-term trend going back years.
The Oslo government’s response is to ban rod fishing on 33 rivers. And it seems likely this ban will spread, although the phrase fiddling while Rome burns springs to mind.
The root problem is that for decades wild salmon stocks have been negligently mismanaged by the Norwegian Government – a confession that’s missing from the finger-pointing list of guilty parties it blames for the collapse. Ellen Hambr, the Environment Agency’s director, says the big threat is climate change and then a range of human activities that include hydro and other river barriers, disease, commercial exploitation and last a bracketed after-thought; (fish farming) – the gorilla on the table.
Some Norwegians underscore this position (it’s the climate, stupid) by pointing to Sweden where there is very little salmon farming and a similar decline in the salmon run. They don’t mention that the almost land-locked Baltic Sea, home to Sweden’s salmon, is becoming a cesspit with a huge and growing dead zone caused by pollution. The Baltic is not a good place to be a salmon.
Climate change, to state the obvious, is universal. Warmer river temperatures reduce smolt size which in turn increases mortality and reduces the numbers returning successfully to sea. Once back in the ocean, the record-high temperatures in the North Atlantic suppress food chains and further impact salmon growth and health. Salmon are an indicator species for climate impacts and, for this reason, their future looks grim.
So we need to act on climate, but that’s not something Norway can do on its own. Cue hand-wringing and empathetic green tears. The poor salmon are victims of a global crisis, what’s a small country meant to do? Shrug,Sigh. More hand-wringing.
So what is the Norwegian Government up to? Why flag climate change, on which Norway has a decent track record but little influence, and treat fish farming as a bracketed afterthought?
As ever, the answer is money. Fish farming is a mainstay of the Norwegian economy. The Government licences an industry that produces half of all the world’s farmed salmon, worth $8b a year (2nd only to its oil and gas earnings). That’s before factoring in the benefits to the domestic economy. It’s not a business with a good track record in anything except generating profits. Last year the fish-farm mortality rate was nearly 63m fish (17% of the total stock). Would you trust these cowboys with your river? How about a chicken farm?
Sea lice, the major by-product of salmon farming, don’t restrict themselves to killing millions of farmed salmon. Many of the fish pens are in Fjords that connect ocean-run Atlantic Salmon with their home rivers, bringing wild fish into contact with farmed lice. According to the Norwegian Institute of Marine Research, fish-farm lice killed an estimated 50,000 wild salmon in 2019 – as many as 30% of the run in some rivers. Since then, fish farming has grown.
Aquaculture has devasting impacts on wild salmon populations and it’s the gorilla on the table the government can’t or won’t see.
Closing rivers can help, and it delivers a financial body blow for fisheries, hotels, guides and all the small businesses that depend on their summer trade from anglers. However, their collective contribution to Norway’s economy is about US$1.25b. A drop in the Atlantic when compared with the wealth-generating fish farms. So no prizes for guessing why wild salmon are sacrificed to keep their farmed cousins in business.
The ban on the 33 rivers is open-ended, and it is assumed it will remain in place until the stocks show sufficient recovery. This could be never, because if Hambr is right and it’s down mostly to climate change, then closing a handful of rivers won’t improve anything much. If, instead, the government curbs the shit-show fish farms then there can be a significant revival, albeit within the context of slower long-term climate decline.
The choice facing the Norwegian government is simple. It can carry on with business as usual and hurry the wild salmon into marginal irrelevance, or it can improve it’s own act. And it’s not just the fish farms that fall within their purview. Take Catch and Release: In 2023, 51,000 out of the 70,000 rod-caught Atlantic Salmon in Norway were killed. What’s that about?
So the bottom line for saving the Atlantic Salmon is money, and the Norwegian government won’t achieve anything much until it reigns in its multi-billion $ fish-farming money monster. Meanwhile, I’m hoping the gorilla on the table will finally throw a temper tantrum and bloody some noses. We can but hope.
There is one small consolation: For the fish that successfully make the run up-river this year the prospects are good. River flows are healthy and, so far, water temperatures are lower than in recent years. The conditions are favourable for those fish that make it to the redds. And in 33 rivers there will also be, because of the bans, more returning smolts for the sea lice to latch onto. We can thank the Norwegian Government for that.
A Silver Bar of good news from Little Warham
A bar of silver at Little Warham Fishery for Anthony. There is debate as to salmon or sea trout but either way its great to sea a glimmer of silver hope from a beautiful beat on the River Torridge.
Below is guidance on salmon and sea trout identification from the late great Hugh Falkus. Every fish is different of course and identification is not always clear cut. I remember many years ago catching a silver bar from the Lower Taw, at the time I thought it was a salmon but looking at the photo a few years later I realised that it was a fine double figure sea trout of 10lb 4oz, my personal best.
Atlantic Salmon : THE BRINK OF EXTINCTION?
https://fishrise.substack.com/p/atlantic-salmon-the-brink-of-extinction?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1289122&post_id=140218257&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1uvzdy&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
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Salmon are in trouble. Ask anyone involved and they’ll tell you how bad it is and who’s to blame (it’s always someone else).
It’s so bad that the Atlantic Salmon is now officially an IUCN Red List Endangered Species in the UK. In Ireland, the population has collapsed by 80% in 20 years. Other places and other salmon species are not far behind, and the word extinction really has entered the debate.
We can see this decline by watching the way the money flows. Just about everywhere the value is slowly ebbing out of salmon fishing, almost no matter how or where we do it, and from mega-trawler to rod & line.
Sure, we can remove dams and nets, replant catchments and clean up pollution to help mitigate the decline, but they’re not enough.
This crisis is universal, which is of note, because not everywhere has nets or fish farms or pollution or management corruption. Indeed, some have none of the above, yet their salmon are in trouble.
One of Scotland’s most exclusive rivers, the Helmsdale, used to be a place where fishing was accessed via dead men’s shoes. Royalty graced its banks and the management was so discrete as to be almost uncontactable. A rod on the Helmsdale was a mark of status. Now the Helmsdale has gaps to fill and is promoting itself in upmarket magazines. It has no pollution and no fish farms to blame. Something else is going wrong.
What salmon everywhere have in common is rising water temperatures. This is happening both at sea and in rivers. High temps impact badly on salmon at every stage of their lifecycle, from squeezed and collapsing ocean food chains to overheated redds and undernourished smolts failing to make the journey back to sea. The salmon lifecycle makes them especially vulnerable to warming water.
This is real and it’s happening everywhere. Check out the Missing Salmon Alliance for a thorough breakdown of these combined threats. Their rallying call is Cold, Clean Water – which is as succinct a summary of the salmon’s plight as you can find anywhere.
And it’s not just salmon: Entire food chains are wobbling. In recent years 10 billion snow crabs have gone missing from Alaskan waters and the most plausible explanation is starvation in warming seas. A few years ago 100m Alaskan cod went AWOL for the same reason: Warmth increases fish and crustacean metabolic rates, so they have to eat more just to maintain body weight. At the same time the warm water suppresses growth in their food supply. So they need more, get less and starve. It’s becoming a regular feature of ocean life.
Worse, the increase in metabolic rate may also increase salmon’s need for oxygen beyond the ability of their gills to fully deliver. If so, that too would inhibit growth and reproduction.
To understand why, we need to do some time travelling because today’s benign weather wasn’t always a given. Our ancestors had a much tougher time than us.
About 17,000 years ago the world was in the depths of the last Ice Age. We humans scraped a marginal existence as hunter-gatherers. Life was freezing and the world was a whopping 5c colder than nowadays.
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We hit our stride about 10k years ago when the climate warmed and delivered a sweet spot that stuck. We could sow crops, expect to harvest them and feed our expanding population. Great civilisations formed. We could also hunt and fish for nature’s seemingly boundless resources such as the herbivores that roamed the plains and the fish and whales in our seas. The post-glacial world was rich in opportunity.
This is the Holocene Era: The time when the Earth and its climate came good for humans. There were blips along the way: a few major volcanic eruptions that caused cooling and short-term global famines, for example. But since the end of the Ice Age, Planet Earth’s climate has been stable and very hospitable.
Then came the Industrial Revolution and the arrival of the fossil fuel era. We are about 250 years into it now – the red zone below.
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Current predictions are that temperatures will likely peak at about +2-3C, with growing confidence that it will be a lot closer to 2C than 3C. The hoped-for 1.5C target is surely a lost cause.
We have understood the basic science behind this since the mid-1800s. It’s not difficult – excess CO2 is pollution that traps heat in the atmosphere. We can measure it very accurately. We know the science is good and that what’s happening now is unfolding as scientists predicted it would (my first TV report saying the Holocene could unwind was nearly 30 years ago, and I was in Antarctica reporting established science, not breaking new ground). The scientists even got the speed of change about right, although as a layman I’m shocked by what we’re seeing now:
NASA animation of global temperature change since 1880:
We’re hitting temperatures not seen for 125,000 years and it’s going to get worse. When we finally stop pumping out CO2, we will revert to a long, slow cooling trajectory (business as usual). It will take thousands of years to get back to where we were just 250 years ago ( NASA ). That’s one heck of a hangover from our CO2 party that we’re giving to future generations.
It’s not all bad news (below). Climate scepticism is fading, clearing the way for better political engagement. The graphic below shows that only the 10% or so on the margin are still drinking neat Clorox. This group are mostly hard-core conspiracy theorists and have bucket lists of competing dire consequences they expect to suffer. You’d think climate doomsterism would be right up their victim-centric street, but I don’t think they will ever shift their position by much. I suppose they believe that one day they’ll be proved right and they won’t be the only ones dying of vaccine-preventable diseases or in G3/4/5 radio mast attacks.
The remaining 90% of us are increasingly concerned about climate change. The dial is shifting.
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So where does this leave the salmon?
The answer is worrying: We can do a great deal to adapt to and mitigate the impacts, but the bottom line is that we’re stuck in a pattern of decline that won’t end until we tackle the root problem. The Earth is getting too warm and it’s happening too fast for the fish to adapt.
Ask an Atlantic Salmon. If you can find one …