Monday 21 November 2016

Storm Angus


Storm Angus, the first named storm of this winter, swept through Devon overnight last Saturday, flooding roads and houses, felling trees, and, quite naturally of course, disrupting trains. The Tamar peaked at around 8 feet on Sunday morning, not quite enough to inundate the flood plain here, but enough to precipitate strange events _ the Loch Ness monster, following the Scottish referendum, then Brexit, and now Trump, has finally had enough of the Highlands, and has gone walkabout. As you can see from the photo, here is Nessie, exploring the Tamar at Polson gauging station.

Nessie in the Tamar

Hartley weir on the river Lyd. The spate had dropped significantly by the time this photo was taken, but was still at a more than adequate height for fish to run. Nothing was seen in around 20 minutes of observation, but the river has held sufficient water for the previous ten days, and many salmon and sea trout will have ascended in that time. ( Watch the video in our last blog to see fish running on much less water than this). We expect to see redds being cut by the end of this week.
 

Hartley weir the week before, young Dan playing his first grayling. Dan caught two grayling that morning, both on nymph in the pool below the weir.

Dan's father Alex admiring the boy's fish.

A happy lad


Friday 11 November 2016

Spawning run


The catchment of the river Lyd, the main salmon nursery of the Tamar system, has been woefully short of water for most of this autumn. A spell of heavy ( but short-lived) rain overnight on November 8th put the river up by several inches, and although this hardly qualifies as a significant spate, it was certainly enough to precipitate a small run of salmon. Having been bottled up for many weeks in the deeper pools lower down the system, the fish were very keen to take advantage of any extra and water move up towards the main spawning grounds, as this video shows.


Watch closely in full HD.