The long awaited netting of the Halstead Reservoir finally took place on Saturday 18th February 2017. This activity was led by the E.A. and was a total success. With help from our bailiffs and committee members we managed to pull the net through 3 times, below are a few photos from the day!
The first time was a great success catching in excess of 3000 small silver fish which were all under 1lb in size. Ben from the E.A was completely shocked at the number of silver fish in the water and felt that the water was definitely over stocked and unhealthy for all the fish and felt that the number of fish stocked definitely needed to be reduced.
The silver fish which were removed were safely released into the club stretch of the river Colne in an attempt at helping to restock the river after the contamination which occurred a few years ago killing most of the fish.
The second attempt at pulling the net through was a no go, completely missing any shoals of fish, and Ben from the E.A confirmed this is completely normal, and not an indication of numbers of fish in the water.
The third and final time however produced over 70 carp varying in size and health conditions approximately 40 carp were put back into the Halstead Reservoir as they were in good health and approximately 30 were removed.
Ben From the E.A was again completely shocked again at the state of some of the carp and felt they should be removed and placed in one of our less fished waters, therefore they were taken to our club water Coblands and released to the excitement of the members fishing there that day.
The fish which were in extremely bad states, Ben felt should be removed and put in our stock pond for breeding purposes only and to live out the remainder of their lives in peace.
Ben was keen to point out that the state of the fish was merely a result of years of being fished and feeding hard not necessarily poor fishing.
The E.A have recommended that we still need to reduce the number of small fish in the water by even more and will be in touch with us to arrange another netting.
All in all it was a very successful day and we would like to thank Ben from the E.A our committee members and bailiffs for their hard work.
We would also like to thank the landowners of both the Halstead Reservoir and the River at Hull Mill for allowing us to move fish around and help the environment by restocking the river.
