Well, they've pretty much emptied the rivers.....

[chesters1]

The Wey here is empty of coarse fish ,only ever seen one otter miles away ,the reason a fluff chucker club has the rights by sheephatch lane ,when the EU strip the stretch for fish they return the trout . its certainly not my fault

The river is badly managed the fish cannot come downstream to my stretch because theres a weir by waverley abbey the river which is pretty much silted up above it the weirs 6 feet high the water 1ft deep so its 5 ft of silt going upstream .

The only way fish can get back to populate the stretch after the EU pinch them is to swim upstream from the southern Wey and brave the trout! The once huge shoal of chub at farnham is long gone its got so bad the water is cloudy which is probably half the reason ,ofckurse once the wier stops in the summer its only fed by a few springs even the bourne stream stops .Below waverley weir the river bed used to be 5ft lower but its silted up ,the EA couldnt arrange a **** up in a brewery  never mind look after rivers dont blame otters blame the EA !

A for ****ing up rivers themselves

Or

B letting third parties do it!

As for otters become problematic theres maths involved ,you can apply this scenario to any predator and prey ! If theres lots off otters then theres more fish than you realise

https://tasks.illustrativemathematics.org/content-standards/tasks/816

Still its a change from 'eastern europeans' catching fish on cheap tackle in far more quantity than "experienced" anglers with the latest gear possible can ,is it just an excuse bad anglers use when they blank ?

Half the anglers in matches on the medway blanked ,there were no otters ,mink or american crayfish to blame back then And europeans rode bikes with onions around their necks they wernt there to fish !

The reasons have probably already been found but hushed up ,washing powder ? Washing liquid ? Toilet cleaner believe me its not otters why were the rivers declining before they were reintroduced?

Could it be even more simple ? Less anglers so less food going in to feed the fish over winter in rivers (most go to commercials) rivers compared to the past are shadows of what they were in anglers ? The answers out there it needs finding or admitting!

Edited June 12, 2022 by chesters1

[Whitty]

The traveller was one fish,there were several big ones,but also smaller ones too,fish of five to seven pounds,now there are none,there used to be a good head of perch and chub too,now virtually none,small roach and dace remain,the Ivel lost virtually all its barbel in a season and a half,in 2014,in 2012 I caught barbel from 4ozs to 18lbs,with fish of several year classes between,you could spot fish during the close season,now a barbel is a rare spot,that after the EA had restocked the river after complaints by the I've Protection Association, there are still chub in the river,but not a patch on what it has been all of my life,the Ouse and I've had breeding populations that successfully spawned most years,but survival rates of young barbel is poor,now otters are seen regularly,tell me,how many do you see on your rivers,I'm interested as these days I tend to be in my own bubble rivers wise....

[Martin56]

At 65, I've still only ever seen Otters on Telly (& Ring of Bright Water)

Cormorants, Mink & Herons are surely a big part of it as well??

Edited June 13, 2022 by Martin56

[Peterjg]

Otters are a fairly common sight on the Thames and Kennet now.  They are now not so scared of humans. 

Brilliant plan - introduce otters (no consultation and now no control), tight controls of cormorants (RSPB) and tight controls of signal crayfish (EA).  Don't forget more boats, more paddle boarders (cretins), more free swimmers (cretins), more raw sewerage, more abstraction, more pollutants = too many predators, less water, poor water quality, less aquatic life, less fish.

[Whitty]

Each river has differing issues with predators,the Ouse and the Ivel have,signal crayfish and cormorants in abundance to add to the very healthy population of otters,all add up to be a soup of damaging predators,that is without an ever growing population of humans,creating abstraction and water quality issues,sadly certain species aren't coping well with it and may well be under serious threat....

[Tigger]

21 hours ago, Whitty said:

The traveller was one fish,there were several big ones,but also smaller ones too,fish of five to seven pounds,now there are none,there used to be a good head of perch and chub too,now virtually none,small roach and dace remain,the Ivel lost virtually all its barbel in a season and a half,in 2014,in 2012 I caught barbel from 4ozs to 18lbs,with fish of several year classes between,you could spot fish during the close season,now a barbel is a rare spot,that after the EA had restocked the river after complaints by the I've Protection Association, there are still chub in the river,but not a patch on what it has been all of my life,the Ouse and I've had breeding populations that successfully spawned most years,but survival rates of young barbel is poor,now otters are seen regularly,tell me,how many do you see on your rivers,I'm interested as these days I tend to be in my own bubble rivers wise....

Alan, the rivers round here have always had otters present.  The otters where there before the barbel where illegaly stocked, so the barbel have reached the numbers they have done in the presence of the resident otters.  People moaned a lot about the introduction of barbel as the roach etc dropped right off as the barbel numbbers exploded.  Anglers blamed the barbel for the rapid decrease in the numbers of roach, chub and other species, the gudgeon vanished!   The barbel seemed to reach a peak and have now dropped off in numbers.  As the barbel have droped off in number the roach, dace, perch and chub etc have bounced back to very good numbers.

Last year I was stood mid river whilst casting across the flow trotting a float for barbel.  Anyhow, whilst I was watching my float trott down stream I noticed an otter appear porpoising along the edge of the far bank upstream towards me. As I watched it it moved out into the middle of my swim virtually on top of the spot where I thought my sweetcorn wou,d have landed amongst the rocks etc, my float went withing a few feet of the otter!

The otter kept appearing for some air and then diving back down.  The swim was around 3 to 4ft deep.  I carried on trotting my float through the swim with the otter still doing it's thing in the middle of it. It turned out the otter did not put all the fish off feeding as I caught three barbel whilst it was present in the swim.  I have no idea what the otter was doing, but I reckon it was rooting under stones for eels, invertibrates etc, or maybe eating my sweetcorn?

I do know someone hooked a otter on a boilie and actually filmed it as they tried to play it.  The line parted so the poor otter had a large hook stuck in it's mouth, throat or guts.

I once saw an otter pop up like a seal about 50 yards downstream of me on a small river, it look round at me only to submerge and dissapear. Out of curiosity I walked straight down to the spot where the otter had been and proceeded to trott my float in the spot.  The bait had no sooner began to sink and my float was pulled under, it was a huge dace.  Every trott after that produced a dace or chub, mostly large dace and small chub to a pound or so.  I have to addmitt to being surprised on both of those occassions that the fish just weren't put off by the otter.

Now pike on the other hand, they are genuine party poopers and deffo kill the swim lol.

What I do find odd about those rivers where it apears that otters have ate all the barbel is, if there are no fish left in the river, what are the otters and other predators eating.  If there is no food then the predators have to move on or die, and they won't live lo g without food.

By the way Alan, i'm not saying you or anyone else are wrong regarding your thoughts that otters have ate the fish, i'm just saying there may be other causes for the demise of the fish...maybe?

[Whitty]

The thing is your river is larger than the two in question,down here when otters were not about the bunny huggers dug out the banks and put wooden holts in,every 300yds,then they trapped females and micro chipped them,then when they knew they had kitts they went into the holts and chipped the kitts too,if a parent was found dead they rescued the young and released them when fit to the site of their birth to find their own territories artificially increasing the population,a female normally has a territory of 2-3 miles,a male 3-6,in our rivers it has been half that,the damage to duck,coot,moorhen populations is high,let alone fish and as barbel are sedentary during cold spells they are prone to severe predation,add to that our rivers don't have heavy flows until floods letting otters hunt the entire river,I cannot say what goes on in your river,but I sure have a good idea what happens in mine...as for catching while an otter has been present,I've done it once,can't tell you how many times they have disappeared in a cloud of dust though and all it proves is how dopey fish are in relation to otters...

Edited June 14, 2022 by Whitty

[Tigger]

One of the rivers I spoke of is only small Alan.

Regarding the fish still feeding while the otters were present, they obviously knew/sensed they weren't on the otters menu by it's actions.

I've seen the same thing with pike, fish buzzing about close to them feeding as though the pike wasn't there, so the fish must have an inert sense that the pike was in non predatory mode.

As I said, if there is no fish left in the river, why are the predators still there, they have to eat something and they won't live long on a few garden pond fish.

[Whitty]

There are fish,small roach and dace have filled the niche,successful spanners and with more food available they have flourished,if that rocks an anglers boat,fine,not me I'm afraid,as I said earlier,there are odd barbel present,but blanking nineteen times out of twenty is worse than carping...

[chesters1]

Now if only we could train otters only to eat carp!

They were almost unheard of in canals in the south never mind rivers when i was young,back then you spent time and money looking for them now you spend more trying to find a carp free water .when i say carp i dint mean crucian nor what were called wild carp then they were a bonus in a lake full of stunted roach or rudd