Members of Wistlandpound Fly Fishing Club assembled at Bulldog Fly Fishery on a calm cold winter’s morning. The bare trees of winter silhouetted against the misty morning light.
The friendly Winter Challenge competition was due to start at 10.00am and lines touched down on the calm lake surface as members cast their lures.
After half an hour I was surprised that I had not had a take as I searched the water with a damsel nymph fished in conjunction with an Intermediate Snowbee Line. As I looked around the lake at fellow competitors I was surprised at the lack of bent rods.
I guessed the fish would eventually switch on and this proved correct as members rods soon started to bend as the lakes residents started to feed.
Just as I pondered upon changing to a different fly a good sized rainbow appeared in the clear water and engulfed the fly as I was about to lift it from the water. After a spirited tussle my first trout of the day was safely netted.
I fished on keenly expecting more action but after half an hour I had received no more enquiries. I glimpsed a few trout moving close to the surface and changed tactics tying on a damsel booby with longish marabou tail. After a couple of cast’s, I watched as a good trout converged on the fly. A beautiful rainbow of close to four pound.
I persisted with the booby for a short while losing what felt like a good trout after a few seconds of contact. With several fish moving close to the surface, I changed to a floating line and lost a fish on a team of buzzers. After a further twenty minutes I tied on the damsel again and after a couple of casts I hooked into another good rainbow to complete my three fish limit.
By now most members had completed their bag. Club secretary David Richards arrived late at 1.00pm due to work commitments. This proved to be no disadvantage as his first cast produced the biggest fish of the day a well proportioned rainbow of 4lb 14oz. Within fifteen minutes David had completed his three fish limit and won the competition with 13lb 5oz.
It had been a good morning with the fish proving challenging enough to make the fishing interesting. It is far better when you have to work a bit to catch the days bag.
Based at the aquarium, the chosen candidate will assist in the overall, daily operations of the aquarium with the majority of time allocated to exhibit area servicing and management.
Responsibilities
These include; maintenance of aquatic life support, daily husbandry work for the animals, meeting nutritional requirements and feeding practises, health and hygiene, record keeping in accordance with Zoo License requirements, engagement with health and safety policies and general planning ahead to support the collection and other colleagues.
The role will be hands-on, assisting in the preparation of front of house and the exhibit area before visitor arrivals, ongoing daily maintenance and carrying out a closing down procedure.
Visitor engagement is a key part of the role. This includes general interaction with the customers, providing educational talks, feeding demonstrations, sharing points of interest and assisting with children’s quizzes.
The exhibit team here is established with many years of experience. They remain a wholly motivated, friendly and passionate team with their primary role being in promoting local wildlife, habitats and environmental awareness to visitors. They currently care for approximately 70 species of native freshwater and marine life in their recreated natural habitats. They look forward to welcoming the chosen candidate and will support their training in order to establish them as a key supportive and valued team member.
Employment details
Job Type: Part-time
Salary: From £11.44 per hour
Expected hours: 10 – 30 per week (subject to seasonal demands).
Benefits: Employee discount
Schedule: Monday to Friday & weekend availability
Start date; 04/03/24
Requirements; Essential and Preferred Skills
Education: Certificate of Higher Education (preferred)
Experience: Animal care including aquatics: 2 years (preferred)
Customer facing work &/or experience.
Highly motivated, energetic and reliable team player.
To have passion for wildlife and possess environmental and conservation credentials.
Excellent communication skills and confidence to communicate clearly with children, disabilities and other audiences.
Quick to learn and approve aquarium ethos and practises.
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Dynamic; able to offer ideas. Develop teaching resources for formal and informal education.
Full clean driving license
Applicants
Submissions to include expression of interest, CV and referee/reference details. Send ASAP to e[email protected]
Those successful at application will be invited to interview.
Ilfracombe Aquarium
The Old Lifeboat House
The Pier
Ilfracombe
North Devon
EX34 9EQ01271 864533
Another chance to see this engaging and enlightening film that highlights some of the issues facing salmon. It will be followed by a short talk and discussion. I look forward to seeing a few of you there.
A Happy New Year and a big thank you to all you readers who’ve found and subscribed to my scribblings. Also, a heads-up: I’m going to embark on an erratic and very occasional mission to restore doggerel poetry to the heart of global cultural life. Be warned! The first missive will be arriving soon. Meanwhile – have a great year.
But not this time … here I’m wondering where all the young fish scribes are:
Why are so many of the best fishing books written by dead people? OK, a lot of old dross has been winnowed out by the passing of time and there are a few giants who are still with us. But it’s true: In fishing, the author pre-amble is all too often The Late, Great … (but please, not Izaak Walton).
Much of this can be blamed on the recent arrival of a burgeoning genre of how-to-fish clones. Templated school essays, corralling a rod, a reel, this knot, that fly, a perfect cast and, pause for breath, how to think like a fish.
Think like a fish? Why? Fish brains are an evolutionary also-ran from the times when amoebae were the smart kids on the block.
Not that it matters. This entire genre is redundant because the definitive how-to-fish book was first published in the 1940s and, some 5m sales later, has no need to evolve any further. Mr Crabtree Goes Fishingremains a work of genius and awesome artistic merit. The unattainable benchmark for all that followed. Nothing else comes close.
Better still, Crabtree and son Peter are digital misfits. AI can’t touch them and Disney will never animate them. Although Aardman might: Wallace and Gromit go Fly Fishing … I’d pay to see that. And, sadly, author Bernard Venables is no longer with us. Another one bit the dust. And nor is Peter, who really was Venables’ son. He was tragically killed while riding his moped.
None of which advances the cause of this essay – the pursuit of a reading list with some fresh new talent to showcase.
I am haunted by dead writers – Hunter S Thompson is pictured above. I’ve always thought his essay The Great Shark Hunt was a deliciously snarky take-down of Hemingway’s obscene fishing habits (also dead), but not everyone agrees – including, perhaps, Thompson – and, anyway, it’s yesterday’s story. Does anyone under 40 care?
So there’s the living Matt Labash (some 5 decades in) whose works include Fly Fishing with Darth Vadar in which he flashes a threesome of braggadacious ticks for an ambitious writer: Social endorsement in high society, intimate fluency with a fly rod and, as the pièce-de, consummated wordsmithery. In no particular order that’s sex and drugs and rock and roll (are very good indeed) and a link to another magnificent wordsmith, the late Ian Dury – who I don’t think was a fisherman. What a waste (link below). Meanwhile, Labash has an air of post-coital smuggery, which is both very cool and aspirational. If you’ve got it, inhale.
I’ve also skimmed some great essay writers from other genres in the hope I would find some unsung fishing talent and so great fish writing. It’s not too surprising that Tom Wolfe (dead) had nothing fishy to offer. I should have left well alone. But I was really shocked to draw a blank on PJ O’Rourke (dead). He lived deep in rural New Hampshire where he espoused Republican causes and shot things. So surely he was a fisherman? Maybe not – it seems he tried, hooked himself and quit. How can anyone who wrote an essay titled How To Drive Fast on Drugs While Getting Your Wing-Wang Squeezed And Not Spill Your Drink not end up in a river? And now it’s out and on my desk, Republican Party Reptile has hijacked my best attempts at getting back to work. Genius. Maybe his friend Matt Labash can set me right on this?
You’ve probably noticed that there’s an emerging theme here. That’s because dead heroes are a symptom of ageing. They are the people we look up to when younger – so of course they die first. Aspiration doesn’t work when thrown down a generation because there’s a strong whiff of paunchy creepiness about mid-life people running after the kids.
Maybe I’m getting old? At least I can still raise a glass to Mr Crabtree, who was old before I was born. Cheers. And yes, I’ll have another – thank you.
So I’ll behave myself and stay in my generational lane (must I?). I came across writer James R Babb (alive) later in life, which makes me wonder what stone I’d been hiding under. While he might be fresh to me (I live deep in the time-warp of the Somerset Levels), he’s probably well-known to you. He shows me things I think I’ve seen but never properly noticed – and thus gives me the gift of hindsight. He writes beautifully and knows absolutely everything useful. Really. He can hand-brake turn a sub-clause and restore a beaver pond in an afternoon. Then catch supper.
So why aren’t non-fisherfolk queuing up to buy Babb’s books? Maybe it’s bad marketing by his publishers? On his behalf I’d like to find someone to blame.
And still – where is the young talent?
Good writing is mostly a craft skill that is best picked up young and practised – not unlike a teen strumming a guitar. You hope your fingers will learn to make a noise somebody somewhere likes. Sure there are a few late-starter keyboard warriors who, from the get-go, sprinkle digital faerie dust – but very few hit the page running, let alone with a comfortable niche (branding, you might say). John Geirach didn’t come out of nowhere. So I think great writers emerge, forged in battle with the subs desk (remember them?) and beating their heads against house style guides, editors, publishers and, if they get through all that, the bloody readers who are so willfully off-message – what’s wrong with them?
It’s the process that delivered many of the late-greatsand continues to deliver through the likes of Tom Davis, David Profumo, Babb and more. None of whom could have been generated by AI, or not yet and I hope never.
And have you noticed? In fishing, nearly all men. This is not true if you look in the op-ed pages of our great newspapers and the topical essay-fuelled magazines where female bylines thrive. Mostly the places where writing is curated, published and paid for – a tougher gig than the interweb. Women succeed on the river bank and in print – but are mostly too canny to mix them. Maybe this last point is, well, the point?
There’s an awful lot of self-published male drivel online, with more made possible by the arrival of DIY vanity publishing. Don’t tell me – I’m not listening (guilty as charged).
I can at least claim a publishing first – you’ve now met Mr Crabtree and Hunter S Thompson in the same sentence. And, hold onto your drink, Mr Crabtree is still with us.
So I’ll raise a glass to wordsmiths one and all, and wish a happy New Year to you and yours. Thank you for reading.
Tight lines (that’s an editorial diktat) from a journeyman hack and bankside duffer.
Snowbee are delighted to present their new 2024 catalogue, with new products including the new GXS Prestige 9ft #9 4-piece Fly Rod, new 4th generation Deep Blue reels along with new saltwater fly lines. We also have 10 new killer fly selections for the coming season.
The new catalogue is available to view and download by clicking the image below :-
Many thanks to Richard Wilson for once again sharing his thought provoking prose with North Devon Angling News. The alarming picture painted by Richard is mirrored here with Atlantic Salmon suffering a similar catastrophic decline to those steelhead of North America.
If you have any doubts about whether or not 2023 was a good, bad or just indifferent year for fish, I have some news. It comes, unexpectedly, from the people who like to put a gloss on the world and reassure us all is well.
Sometimes reality intrudes on their seasonal good cheer:
“This year wasn’t so bad, if you make allowances for the conditions,” Salmon Fishing Travel Promo.
I’ll translate: 2023 was so bad they’re worried their clients might take up rock collecting or puddle-jumping instead of spending their money on fishing. It was the year of malevolent spirits known collectively as TheConditions. To save time listing them, I jammed my head into a free online word-cloud generator, shouted ’FISHINGCONDITIONS’, and it spat this back:
‘Lying bastards’ should be in a bigger neon typeface (it’s between excrement and death), but otherwise, it’ll do. You can add/subtract your own ideas.
This is deadly serious: At stake is an entire ecosystem. Salmon prop up everything from bears and forests to orcas at sea. Their loss would be an ecological and economic disaster with terrible consequences.
I know nobody who fished anywhere in 2023 who’s celebrating greatconditions. According to one globe-trotting contact, the year’s fishing was all, and he said it pithily, Shit. Which scans like an old-fashioned train rolling down the track … Pithily Shit, Pithily Shit, Pithily-Shit. Try it out loud. And it’s a great name for a fishery mismanagement award. Imagine: “And the winner of this year’s Pithily-Shit Prize is ….”. Suggestions? I have a hatful.
These Conditions come in two principal varieties; dire fishery management and climate-driven. Like many others, I’m playing catch-up with the speed of it all.
Fishing is big business in sea & river, with economic muscle and political clout. And that has consequences. And so does this: North America is a significant hold-out against science generally and climate science in particular – an astonishing 10-15% are sceptics whose scintillating mental arithmetic makes mainframe computers gasp with envy.
So, when environmental (science) data is unwelcome, route one is to attack – it’s bullshit, being a top technical rebuttal. And route two is to twist political arms.
We can follow the dollars and see this playing out just about everywhere. For example, in British Columbia – where it’s been making the news recently.
Canadian Salmon and Steelhead, a sea-run rainbow trout, swim in much the same pithily-shit word cloud as everywhere else. Although, according to the BC authorities, they don’t. Bear with me – this is relevant wherever fish migrate.
We have a lot of good data on BC’s Steelhead runs. The Skeena River test fishery, for example, shows 2023 was the 2nd weakest run in decades (10k fish), coming just 2 years after the worst (5.5k) on record. The yearly average over nearly 70 yrs is about 35k.
That’s the number arriving in the estuary, so before the lethal river gill nets and then the myriad anglers – including me – who catch (and I hope release) their share along the hundreds of miles of main river and principal tributaries.
So how many female fish in prime condition will make it to the redds in this shrunken-run year of desperately low flows and high water temperatures? Surely, not enough. And we also know that juveniles, the smolts, are surviving the return journey to sea in ever smaller numbers (everywhere). Warmer water makes for smaller smolts – and size is a matter of life or death.
This, you might think, is dreadful news for the fish. Not so, according to British Columbia’s fishery dons (the Dept of Fisheries and Oceans). It was business as usual.
“Trust me, I’m a fisheries officer …”
Awkwardly, for the dons, Canada’s Auditor General has just released yet another report revealing how they’re screwing things up, big time. It gets worse when you look at how and why.
It seems the dons, whose remit features conservation, happily grant legal protection to species of no commercial value while just about always blocking it for $ high-value species, like salmon. And why would they do that? I think you just guessed.
They make their decisions with the help of unverified data supplied by anonymous ‘collaborators’ who, according to the AG, have conflicted interests in, for example, the commercial fishery. Who’d-a thought it? And while the dons are legally obliged to report and root out such conflicts of interest, they regularly don’t (says the AG). Because maybe they’re mates, or siblings or neighbours? Or some such.
It reeks of cronyism and corruption.
As said, the Skeena is just one among many. The report covers all Canadian regions. And, worldwide, fishery managers are bigging up stocks, mismanaging and covering up threats like disease and climate change while piling on the nets and rods – and trousering the $s.
Unsurprisingly, more fishermen are staying away. Once-exclusive beats on famous rivers are becoming easier to access – and disappointing to fish.
So it should come as no surprise that a senior DFO official wrote this of the dire 2021 run: There’d be no protection for the fish because the Skeena data is “…a measurement problem and it’s not precise enough to warrant massive socioeconomic impacts and alienating those that care about Steelhead the most.” There were just 5.5k fish, a record-busting low, andhe’s suddenly spotted a measurement problem with near-70 yrs of continuous data? And who are these most caring victims of ‘massive socioeconomic impacts’. Whose money? Well, it sounds like those vested interests outed by the AG. So there’s the playbook: Undermine the facts, falsely claim the moral high ground and hug your collaborators tight. And screw the fish (and the Auditor General).
I nominate the writer for a Pithily-Shit Award (a turd on a styrofoam plinth, perhaps). I’ll have to make a lot.
The DFO Pithily-Shit Award
When a species gets into as much trouble as the Steelhead on the Canadian and US West Coast, the moral and scientific imperative is to prove fishing is sustainable. We shouldn’t keep hammering them to see if the population collapses. Here’s another DFO “measurement problem”:
The estimated spawning abundance of Thompson River steelhead. The last data point is the expected ‘23 run (ie spawning spring ‘24): about 230 fish. BC Ministry of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship
As a general observation, endemic corruption is very hard to shift.
So what to do to help the fish here, there and everywhere? If we are so minded, there’s a lot. We can start by putting people in charge who care about them. We can clean up our rivers, get rid of dams, restore headwaters, limit fishing pressure everywhere and treat them as a precious gift from Mother Nature and the foundation of an entire ecosystem. But will we?
And then there’s the really grim stuff: Events already underway that we’re powerless to influence. This is where I fear the Conditions may get impossibly tough.
For example: What was, at the time, the most powerful marine heatwave on record, “The Blob”, brought havoc to the North Pacific from 2014 to 2016. The impacts ranged from massive algal blooms to Baleen Whale die-offs.
It triggered a food chain collapse. Small bait fish are eaten by just about everything bigger than they are. The warmer water reduced their food supply (and the oxygen content of water) while increasing their metabolic rate, so they needed to eat more, but had access to less. Inevitably there were mass deaths and the survivors lost body weight and fat content.
This worked its way back up through the food chain. Everything had to consume more to keep pace with over-heating metabolic needs – but there was less to eat. Scientists estimate 1 million fish-eating sea birds, Common Murres, died of starvation and 100 million Pacific cod vanished from the waters off southern Alaska – and cod do not spawn in waters warmer than 9.6c (IMR, Norway). We’ll never know how many Salmon and Steelhead died.
This year has seen ocean temperature records aplenty (below) as the world hits its warmest for 125,000 years. There is more and worse to come.
We have it in our power to stop the rot but, oh my, there’s a lot to do. The flight of capital out of fossil fuels means that carbon emissions could start to fall in the next year or three. It’s a start, but we need to do the massively scaled-up equivalent of an emergency stop with a planet-sized supertanker.
Meanwhile, a handful of small-time idiots with mates and money in the game behave as though business as normal will deliver a happy ending for Salmon and Steelhead. They are the Pithily-Shits with the wilful negligence to fuck it up for everyone.
On a more cheerful note, good conservation practice is becoming a major project on some rivers. It’s a fearsomely complex puzzle …. but I want to go fishing in places where conservation drives management decisions and my presence (and money) make a net contribution for the better. Is that too much to ask? I can at least try – and I’ll start by not going anywhere beholden to the Pithily-Shitters.
And finally, here are some global sea surface temperatures to ponder (live link below). Is anyone dumb enough to call this Bullshit? Sadly, yes.
World Ocean Temperatures 1981 – 2023 (top). University of Maine click graph for a live & interactive link
To read more of Richard Wilsons fishrise click on the link below : –
We are very fortunate in North Devon to have some excellent fishing tackle shops providing local anglers with a wide range of tackle and bait. Tackle shops are at the heart of the local angling community providing a meeting place where anglers can pick up the tools of the trade before spending their hard earned cash. Tackle shops are also a vital social centre where anglers can mingle to plan trips to the water’s edge. I value the support given to North Devon Angling News by our local tackle shops. Over the last few days before Christmas why not pop into your local tackle shop and maybe buy a present or two and stock up with tackle for the Christmas holidays and next year’s fishing trips.
Wistlandpound Fly Fishing Club held their Christmas Competition at Bulldog Trout Fishery with the club’s entire membership of eight competing.
The grey overcast mild conditions seemed ideal for a good day’s winter sport as members spread out around the lake to cast out into the cool clear water.
I put out a line on the water near the inlet to the lake were I have enjoyed success on previous visits. On the first two casts good sized rainbow could be seen following my fly to turn away at the last minute. I watched other anglers around the lake and noticed a couple of bent rods as is often the case at the start of the day.
After half an hour with no contact I decided upon a move to a fresh spot. I was using an olive damsel on the point and a small drab diawl bach on a dropper with an intermediate line. The move proved to be a wise one as the line soon tightened as a hard fighting rainbow seized the dropper. This was followed a few minutes later by another rainbow of close to 3lb. It seemed that I had either located the fish or they had come on the feed for within five minutes I added a 3lb 12oz rainbow to complete my three fish bag.
I spent the next half an hour chatting to fellow club members and capturing a few action shots as they too connected with the lakes hard fighting rainbows.
Andre Muxworthy with a fine Bulldog Rainbow
Fishery owner Nigel Early and his son Tom arrived at the water’s edge with delicious burgers and warming toddy, hot coffee and a tray of mince pies. Convivial chatter and Christmas cheer filled the grey winters day as we chatted of the club’s future and plans for 2024.
The enlarged trout lake has the capacity for a dozen or more anglers to fish in comfort. The clear waters offer exciting sport with rainbows presently stocked up to 8lb plus with some large browns to be introduced in the New Year.
I left the lake at lunch time with Christmas preparations pending at home. Most members had caught their three fish but a few had yet to finish.
Colin Combe with a good rainbow
Nigel Bird with a 3lb plus rainbow
David Richards with the biggest rainbow of the day at around 4lb
David Richards won with three trout for 10lb 5oz. Andre Muxworthy and Dave Mock were runners up with three fish for 9lb and myself fourth with three fish for 8lb 2oz. Colin Combe banked three for 7lb 14oz.
