Environment Agency Stretched Too Far

**Giles**

Hi everyone,

Well the rain keeps coming and the rivers are all bursting at the seams. Looking out of the window now it looks like the rivers are going to have a hard time again as the rain is lashing down. It seems that our friends at the EA are overstretched too. Last weekend myself and 3 other site members went to have a look at a few lakes for Carp sessions and to be discreet I won't be naming the venue even though the owner of it was doing his best not with his lake but a dyke nearby.

What this weather has done to our river systems has to be seen to be believed. This dyke was full with fry and juvenile fish up to guestimate 3 years old. Rudd, Roach, Mirrors and even a Ghostie were all "gobbing" on the top due to low oxygen levels and pollution which has been flushed through the rivers and the dykes and drains that feed them. We aren't talking about fish in their hundreds here were talking about thousands and then there was the fry too. In all you could say this was an envirnmental disaster.

The owner of the lake told us that he'd contacted the EA a couple of days earlier when the fish came upstream but was told by the EA:

"nobody owns the water (dyke) and we are concentrating on the lakes and rivers first"

Between ourselves and the lake owner we all agreed that if nothing was done quick the majority of the fish will die if not all of them. It was good to see however that locals were netting the fish and trying their best to save the larger ones that were nettable. Obviously this is against the law Exclamation

but the empathy shown by the locals would make anyone turn a blind eye. We could only guess where these fish were going but we didn't care as long as they were OK. I'm sure the locals have some nice fish in their garden ponds now.

What this post amounts to is from an anglers point of view of the EA and how they are not doing their job with regards to fisheries and the waterways. We keep paying ever increasing rod licence fees for fear of being caught by an EA bailiff without one. Yet i've been fishing since I was 7 years old (24 years) and never had my licence checked or met an EA bailiff. Constant news reports about illegal netting of fish by refugees in the UK yet we don't seem to have put a nail in that coffin yet let alone the last nail. Last year the river Don had a pollution incident which killed loads of fish and the EA took the culprits to court and won a small fortune in damages into 100's of thousands and we are told that the money will be going into restocking the river. If the dyke mentioned above was electro fished i'm sure the EA could re stock the Don for less money and use the surplus cash for better purposes. Why the hell are we paying our ever increasing licence fees if the money isn't doing what we expect ????? Why should we also have to pay for an extra licence for 3 rods when each licence covers us for two? most venues will only let you fish 3 maximum anyway? Should your licence not be based on the number of rods you fish not a generic 2 rods per licence?

Debates regarding this issue with the EA are expected.

Giles.

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