Do You Think

[Leon Roskilly]

Well I hope your right because I don't have any confidence in what I see through here. It seems to me that if you mention there might be a problem everyones on your back with flippent/rude remarks and in complete denial. I have yet to hear anyone acknowledge that there is a problem in the Medway with small bass numbers. Just that simple statement would at least mean they know about the situation. No one has mentioned anything about future swawning numbers down here. If this 10 times normal amount of fish all manage to spawn will every year be a 10 times normal spawn? Will we have 10*10 year spawns? At what point do we say we have too many fish? I am not sure this has been thought through,

 

 

Nature always produces far more than it can support.

 

 

Predation, competition for food, disease and environmental stresses assures that only the number that nature can support survives.

 

 

If a habitat can support 80,000 adult bass, it will.

 

 

Regardless of whether we start with 800,000 fry or 8 million fry.

 

 

Tight Lines - leon

[Stoaty]

Yes Leon your right. But is that 80,000 adult bass to the detriment of every other species and creature in the river?

 

You know the situation in the Medway. There's no bass predators the Medway will become a bass only river.

 

You seemed to have dodged most of the questions I asked.

 

At what point do we say we have too many bass in the Medway?

Edited October 30, 2005 by Stoaty

[Leon Roskilly]

Yes Leon your right. But is that 80,000 adult bass to the detriment of every other species and creature in the river?

 

You know the situation in the Medway. There's no bass predators the Medway will become a bass only river.

 

You seemed to have dodged most of the questions I asked.

 

At what point do we say we have too many bass in the Medway?

 

 

Depends how you define too many!

 

There are plenty of small pouting and pin whiting in the Medway - far too many for my liking.

 

A possible reason is that there are so few big bass and big cod to mop them up.

 

And that is why we have an increasing number of seals (predators of small bass and other species) in the Medway, the large finned predators have largely gone from there, so without competition the seal numbers are increasing.

 

(I had a seal pop it's head up and stare me in the face at Sun Pier last year! I've been talking to a local member of British Divers Marine Life Rescue who have been involved in a census of seals (from the poo they leave on the banks at low tide!) and who confirms the increasing numbers)

 

(and the cormorants aren't doing so badly either!)

 

The hope with the BMP is that many of those small bass now, will grow to become larger bass and will provide decent sport and start to get the ecological balance of the river back to what it would normally be.

 

Meaning less of the small bass, pout and whiting, and a good population of decent sized fish to put a bend in your rod.

 

Tight Lines - leon

 

ps I doubt that many will ever say that there are too many big fish in the Medway!

Edited October 30, 2005 by Leon Roskilly

[Stoaty]

Interesting article here about the striped bass recovery. All is not well it seems.

 

Striped Bass Report.

Edited October 31, 2005 by Stoaty

[Leon Roskilly]

When I met a senior CEFAS scientist recently, who is a specialist in bass, he remarked that bass seems to be one of those species which, when it produces a very successful spawning, that is followed by a succession of poor year classes.

 

He didn't know whether that was down to competition for food supply, or preadtion by the larger juveniles on their smaller brethren, but it does indicate that we really have to make the most of the 2002 year class.

 

Miss this opportunity, and an another opportunity to allow our inshore waters to populate with a reasonable number of bass worth catching may not occur for some time, a decade or more.

 

Tight Lines - leon

Edited October 31, 2005 by Leon Roskilly