Your Best Bag Of Roach

[The Flying Tench]

This though was a freak situation as there were few roach left, but they were a very high average size. The small population meant a lot of food for each fish. Not surprisingly, the fishing was thus very difficult and so the venue was very little fished. In fact so little that it took us a long time to get the roach to take bread, with most of the roach falling to worm!

 

The Lambourn near here has some parallels. The roach population ahs largely died off in the last few years, but the ones that are left are getting bigger - though not huge like the Beult. But they've got loads of competition from Grayling. Wasn't there competition from other species in the Beult?

[Steve Burke]

Wasn't there competition from other species in the Beult?

 

There was to some extent but the population in this reach was relatively low. Chub were very scarce and the perch population was low due to little in the way of fry and an earlier bout of disease. There were also some sizeable bream and a fair number of tench, plus the odd carp. There were lots of pike, but very few grew above a few pounds due to lack of food of the right size, although there were no doubt some cannibals.

 

The reason for the low population was the poor state of the river. What little flow there was in the summer was almost entirely treated sewage, and duckweed covered almost the entire surface from about August to November. Presumably the roach had grown big in earlier times and we were fishing for the few survivors.

 

The Beult was made into a SSSI some years back to help turn it around, and I'm told it's recovering somewhat. Whether it'll ever throw up monster roach again though is doubtful.

[Newt]

From This short article and from an earlier comment in this thread, I have to wonder if using meat from zebra mussels would tend to select for larger roach if the water contained a population of the zebras.

 

That raises the question (for me anyway - you folks may all know) of how common the Zebra Mussel (Dreissena polymorpha) is in UK waters.

[GLOBE]

A high percentage of my largest roach have been caught on swan mussel (open the shell, trim part of mussel 'foot' and some trailing parts, and then mount on a short hair-rig).

[The Flying Tench]

The reason for the low population was the poor state of the river. What little flow there was in the summer was almost entirely treated sewage, and duckweed covered almost the entire surface from about August to November. Presumably the roach had grown big in earlier times and we were fishing for the few survivors.

 

Maybe, but couldn't it be that the treated sewage provided a bountiful food supply for the fish that could handle it? Could it be that they got big because of the poor state of the river?

[poledark]

FT, I have gradually built up the view that Roach definitely thrive in slightly polluted water. Maybe I am "making the ideas fit the facts" but it seems to me that so many roach fisheries have declined as they got cleaner.

 

As I say, more than a gut feeling, more likely a gradual build up of litle snippets of info, I can think of rivers that have declined, but none that I know of which have improved for Roach.

 

Do zebra mussels like pollution? I do know a lake that is squeaky clean and is full of the little fellas (and damn great Roach)

 

Den

Edited December 20, 2005 by poledark

[Steve Burke]

Maybe, but couldn't it be that the treated sewage provided a bountiful food supply for the fish that could handle it? Could it be that they got big because of the poor state of the river?

 

It could well be! The EA told me they found 3 small shoals of big roach on their electric fishing surveys. One of them was in the area of a sewage farm.

 

Once these monsters died out the next generation of roach didn't grow so big. It wasn't until recently that the clean-up on the Beult took place and, as far as I know, it's not procuced roach anywhere near this calibre since the early or possibly the mid 80s.

[The Flying Tench]

A high percentage of my largest roach have been caught on swan mussel (open the shell, trim part of mussel 'foot' and some trailing parts, and then mount on a short hair-rig).

 

I suppose the only way to get these mussels is by dragging the bottom of the lake?

[Tony U]

Aren't Swan Mussels a protected species now or did I just dream it?

Edited December 21, 2005 by Tony U

[WickerDave]

Aren't Swan Mussels a protected species now or did I just dream it?

 

Tony, not according to an old topic on here, see posts #21 and #23 in http://www.anglersnet.co.uk/forums/index.p...%20mussel&st=20