How the work parties work

Big Dave "up to his nadgers..."

I’m standing up to my nadgers in cold spring water, wielding a sickle through the long grass, reeds and nettles along the riverbank. Somewhere upstream, Big Dave is doing the same. Every few minutes a raft of leaves and stems comes floating by, and the river is running thick and brown from Dave’s size 11 waders stirring up the silt.

Before...

The sickle hits a post hidden somewhere in the grass and is ripped from my grasp. Before I can grab it, it falls in the muddy water. Bugger.

...after.

I feel around with my wader boots, but all I can make out is a thin layer of mud. I’ll have to wait for a tea break to let the water clear and hopefully find the sickle at the bottom of the river.

This is a fairly typical activity for the work parties at this time of year. Not losing sickles, I mean, but clearing the growth on the bank. With the sunshine and rain, the rate of growth is tremendous and clearing it back, at least enough to give some clear water to cast a fly on, is a fulltime job.

It’s a job best done by hand with manual implements. The bankside growth and the weed in the river are home to hoards of insects and other invertebrates, which are the main food for the trout. They also provide cover for small trout to hide in. So you don’t want to cut them back too drastically, with say a strimmer. The old methods are the best for this work, as labour intensive as they are.

Before...

Without these regular efforts to clear the banks and any excess weed in the stream, the river would quickly become completely grown over.

...after.

On this particular work party day, another group of volunteers were creating fishing platforms on the bank of the Coarse Lake. The work is very varied and divides itself fairly evenly between the river and the lakes.

In October, as the river season ends, we put nets over the spawning shallows to protect the mating fish, and then we don’t go in the river until the following March, when the trout have hatched and moved away from the gravels.

It’s well worth a visit to the upper reaches of the river in November to early December when the fish are spawning. If you approach reasonably quietly you should get a glimpse of some superb fish thrashing around in water that is scarcely deep enough to cover their backs; digging redds in the gravel, laying eggs and then fertilising them.

Another job - Crayfish eradication

Autumn at the fishery

Winter work tends to include fence mending, to ensure the cattle don’t venture in and destroy the banks, clearing the banks of both river and lake and generally tidying up – everything that gets neglected in Spring and Summer when we’re busy with other stuff.

When Spring comes, first job is to remove the nets. Then the work comes in thick and fast – keeping the growth under control, clearing weed and sometimes algae from the lake, creating new riffles with gravel and topping up the old ones, planting ranunculus in some of the downstream swims, keeping the Norfolk Reed growth down in the middle section and sometimes getting the boat out and trimming the growth on the islands. There’s also the ongoing work of sieving the soil from the Coarse Lake to create gravel for the river and topsoil.

All this keeps us busy until October comes round again.

Fishing on a work party day

It’s not hard work really, although it’s quite relentless. Personally, it’s a welcome antidote to so many days spent in the office in front of a blank computer screen haunted by deadlines. Although the work is not exactly taxing, there’s something mentally restorative about it and the surroundings are endlessly beautiful and fascinating. And at the end of the day it helps to improve all our fishing.

So let’s give a big hand to Dave, Steve, Ray, Jim, Tom, Paul, Big Dave and all the others who give their time to keep the fishery working.

And if anyone happens to come across a sickle in the river, could we please have it back?

[If you’d like to join the work parties, please call John on 07774 197411 to find out the date of the next one. Your reward for a few hours work on a Saturday will be free fishing].