Dear Members and Friends
It has been a while since we last met up and much has happened and changed.
As many of you will know, we have lost our dear friend Richard Slocock; who was our Chairman for so many years and I am sure he had chalk stream water in his veins. We all miss him.
We have also lost Robin Bloomfield who was a committee member for many years.
Your two Vice Chairmen and Ruth have been trying hard to steady the ship. We continue to be an active partner in the Southwest River Association which helps and supports our ideas and views and collectively, our voice is louder in the public auditorium with their support.
The state of our rivers; The Frome, is as bad as I have known it in my 35 years, with increased sediment run-off and pollution, in particular by Wessex Water at Loud Mill. Our rivers are in dire need of our protection. We are the only body locally that looks after the rivers for the sake of the river; none of us earn a salary of pension from it. Enough of my soapbox.
Richard Slocock and I had been working hard for some years on ways to save the salmon gene pool on the Frome. The run in 2024 has dropped again to 450. Much of this links in with other rivers in the southwest. Richard Illingworth (who will be retiring this year) has taken up the challenge where Richard Slocock left off which has been wonderful. Now that we have a much better understanding of what happens to the salmon smolts at seas, we are trying to get some sort of Salmon Enhancement programme for the Frome; but it really is like pushing water uphill. The aim is to conserve the Gene Pool until international agreements can be made about salmon netting at sea, and there are several ways to do this. We need to do them all now. To that end, we are supporting GWCT’s work on the Frome of gravel washing, weed fencing near redds and most excitingly, smolt transportation through Poole Harbour.
We have two wonderful speakers for you at our AGM this year, Professor Ken Wheelan from Ireland, who is heavily involved in the international salmon smolt project at sea, and Dr Bill Beaumont who will talk to us about the Smolt Transportation project.
So much is changing in the Fishery world and if we care at all about our rivers, we must defend them; if left to the NGOs, God knows what will happen to our chalk streams. Please remember, we have 80% of the world’s Chalk streams in England and there are only 5 / 6 rivers that have salmon. Chalk stream salmon are unique, it’s all to do with the last ice age, and we have a watch on 2 out of the 6.
We need to ask you the membership, for help – How should we go forward? Are you able to help in some way?
Kind regards
