Goldenloch july 16 / 2012 week 29
I had thought we had escaped lightly but the last few days have been a bit of a trauma, with a total fish kill, it happens and lessons are learnt. So what happened, well as everyone knows we have had algae since March this year. It had started during the extraordinarily unusual hot spell, this algae started to form because of a blanket algae problem we had inherited from the previous two winters which saw the loch covered in ice for approx 2 months each year, underneath the ice in a near perfect environment for growth, blanket algae grew and crawled over and smothered the natural weeds in the bottom of the loch, this caused decomposition and an adding to the water of excess nutrients, the hot weather caused the blanket algae to float and at the same time it released into the water all these nutrients from the dead weeds, we then had a perfect medium for this new green algae to grow in and normally it would have been all over in a space of a few weeks, had it not been for the continual rain which saw loads of extra nutrients being washed into the loch from the fields in the form of nitrogen and phosphate, this rain just saw the loch stay green for weeks and weeks, however we did try a few remedies’ none of which worked the adding of barley straw, barley straw extract, an ioniser, oxygenation, Hydra clear, and many other natural cures, what I will state is that we did not have blue green algae, and that all the samples taken of which there were a few, all came back clear for fishing, we were warned about a possible algae crash because of the type of algae that we had, it was a single celled type, it just kept on multiplying and produced pea soup, so what did happen, it is best described as told to me by a senior ecologist, imagine a large hall full of people with no windows or doors for ventilation and someone lights a fire in a foam filled settee in the middle of the room, very quickly all die due to asphyxiation, the same for the fish, all the algae changed in a few minutes from green living single celled organisms, to dead basically minuscule soot sized particles which the fish sucked in and it choked their gills causing asphyxiation. That all happened on Tuesday past and since then we have removed hundreds of dead fish from the loch and some were outstanding the biggest a saddest loss has to have been the brown trout approx 15 absolutely stunning fish around the 5 > 6 lbs plus many more smaller also a huge amount of 3 to 5 lb rainbows. Now on a more positive note we have got nice water, compared to what it was before, a massive amount of fly life with buzzers hatching all day, today and something ive not heard for a few years was the buzz from flies hatching, shed loads of dragonfly, stoneflies and damselflies and new fish arriving tomorrow Monday 16th, first fish in are going to be 1.75lbs as I need numbers to make up to a reasonable level, Catch and release will be restricted to 5 as I am not going to put up with people pounding fish, It is our intention to keep this fishery as a place for sport and pleasure, it is and always was meant to be a place where people could come and relax, enjoying the countryside catching a few fish on flies and dry flies, soon I hope all these past few months will be a memory and thank go to those that continued to come fishing even when the fish couldn’t see a damned thing, we haven’t been idle however, with now over 200 lessons to complete beginners and many of them catching fish we are looking forward to catering to them in a few fun filled days ahead, hoping this information keeps all informed. John
To Book for Fishing, Call John on 01337840355 or 07968006367. or email john@goldenloch.co.uk or visit www.goldenloch.co.uk or our fb goldenlochfishing