Latimeria

Maybe it had strained one of its farting strings. I've seen Tigger do that and he briefly passed out as well.

Are anglers really any better? Each weekend match anglers queue up to pull out hundreds of lbs of finned commodities spawned via hormone injection, arguably the most popular fish in the country rarely breeds in the wild and is actually a domestic cultivar of the true wild fish, yet a false mythology has been created around it with total bolox about "heritage waters", "history fish", "character fish" and "old warriors" etc., then barbel, the dumbest fish in our rivers, gets dubbed "the prince of the river" on Bacefook and elsewhere, where the proclaimed best fishery in the country for them was actually a sad trickle full of fat old maids (the fish, not the anglers, although looking at some of them...) that couldn't even swim away from a supposedly hand-reared otter. The same circus clowns are now whining about the ditch called the Ivel I see. I shouldn't go online after a few beers, I always worry afterwards I must sound like barmy Barry.

The first one is obviously a Sea Lamprey, Burbot were never known from the Eden. The second report just warrants a Gallic shrug of the shoulders, more likely to be juvenile Wels nowadays than a Burbot, but not particularly likely to be those either. The Gt. Ouse gets enough fishing pressure that it's all but impossible for a viable population to be present. Anyway, the plagues of Otters would have eaten them as an entrée to Barbel Bouillabaise.

My Lutran Army is dealing with the carp, with every one that goes it's another few pounds that Fairbrass doesn't get.

True, I think we're screwed either way, may as well go fishing.

Few hyaenas would jazz up Derbyshire that's for sure, I imagine there are a few tango hippos already in Essez. Translocation has been done as a conservation tool, on a smaller scale with char and whitefish, but it's something that should only be done as a last resort and where as much care as possible has been taken to ensure that there'll be no consequences to other vulnerable species.

Find me an otolith in appropriate sediments and I'll agree....

I don't think there's any record of them having been in Scotland, so there'd be no justification in putting them there (apart from certain exceptional circumstances). https://data.nbn.org.uk/Taxa/NHMSYS0000544703 Publications list here http://www.icer.soton.ac.uk/the-burbot-lota-lota/

I think it's likely that the only places now suitable for them in the UK are outside their former range, so that'd be a non-starter. Maybe some of the recovering rivers in the East Mids., but the species isn't globally threatened, it'd be expensive and of dubious value to reintroduce them in a financial resource-poor environment where the whole lot could be done in by a couple of pump failures at sewage farms or unwanted pesticides being dumped in a land drain by a 13-fingered farmer somewhere. Just the kind of thing the top bods and marketing tools at the EA might go for as a distraction from what's taking place elsewhere, until it loses its PR value and then they'll just pull the funding.

More recently than that (within the last decade) a college in Melton Mowbray obtained some to study their needs, Ian Wellby (now IFM training chair) was involved in it, don't think anything came out of it.

Still a crap comparison, large terrestrial mammals with significant impacts on the ecology of their habitat, against a demersal fish that is still abundant elsewhere within its range. Whassup, them sheep too quick for you? IMO the EA can't even be relied on to safeguard the fish that are still here, this kind of nonsense is just window-dressing to disguise the handing-back of our environment to big business https://www.gov.uk/government/news/environment-agency-reveals-secret-seven-fish

You forgot to add T. rex, just to complete the total non-comparison between wholly-extinct taxa and those that have been locally extirpated in recent history.

Nah, hardly been, work stopped play. Got done over by a pondpig on Bumswart last night, line was round the pin handle and it went off at a rate of knots, flatrodded me and "ping!", Would have got another one but that storm came over and I had washing out... Mapnez had been on earlier when I went to bait up, not sure if he had owt.

The smaller black ones sound like Blackfly, Simuliidae, they seem to have been increasing in the UK in the past decade (at least going off anecdotal reports from anglers). The famous Blandford Fly is one of these. Had to chase a couple away yesterday evening before the lightning chased me away. They're sneakier, usually the first clue I've been bitten is a feeling like nettle stings wearing off on a hand, elbow or the back of my wrist while trotting, then when I look there's one settled down having a feast. Not been done by a cleg in a long time, I usually twig them at the point of landing and clobber them. Shorts and sandals on the Ribble this time of year would just leave you as an amuse bouche. This is Tigger on arrival at the river http://www.dagospia.com/img/foto/11-2013/marlon-brando-colonnello-278502.jpg

Always the chance of an internal or neurological problem, impossible to say. If you're on Bacefook there's actually a couple of pages that deal with loaches, might be worth asking on there for similar experiences. What's your pH, BTW?

"He" looks like a "she" to me, unless it's a real porker. That abdomen looks like that of a gravid fish.

Hot weather on the way, get the aerators back on pronto IMO, then down the line work out why the aerators are needed at all. Fish can use the surface film for respiration when under physiological stress, mussels can't, if they start to die en masse there'll be a nasty feedback loop that could very easily see off the fish.

Green barbs, Paradise fish, White Clouds, Leptobotia?

Assuming this is your weather loach, it was probably just voiding air that had been used for intestinal respiration. I've seen them perform an s-curve when getting rid of it, what you describe isn't quite normal but as long as the fish is behaving otherwise normally, don't worry. Might have been waiting for someone to pull its finger. Check your filtration and surface agitation, if it's using atmospheric breathing regularly it might indicate you need to raise DO.

Quite probably. There's a subculture within carping that means there'll be just as many who don't see anything wrong with this capture compared with those who do. They're rebels, mavericks, stroke-pullers, pukka lads, they don't tread the same boring path as we noddies, they're rule-breakers, they sit in little tents waiting for stocked fish to inhale self-hooking rigs. If you want to know how far angling has to go to be taken seriously, have a read of the comments on the AT Facebook page "Miyles is a leg-end m8, u mupets don't no wot reel fishng iz", and so on and so forth.

Even if working properly that would be dumping nitrates and phosphates into the water, totally inappopriate. Is it an acidic or basic loch?

Convenient place to dump overflow from a slurry tank?

The only scenarios I can think of where the conclusions of that paper might be applicable to fishing in the UK, other than those already mentioned, would be zander fishing on reservoirs and poorly-done recreational sea angling. There's a world of difference in angling culture and practice between the UK and the US.

Was that an intentional pun? The god of the gaps has to find ever more dark and obscure corners to try to hide in. The pope is just changing the sales patter slightly to adapt to a changing business environment, gotta keep that lucre pouring in, all those gold-trimmed dresses and silk slippers don't come for free.

In any aquarium with loaches, sand shouldn't compact as long as it's not too deep, they'll keep it turned over (especially if you feed live blackworm or find a clean source of tubifex), play sand does the job just fine, although I collect different colours and grades of sand every time I get the chance. Fish are much happier over sand.