Hi
Ever since I can remember I have been drawn to water, of all kinds, from the smallest forest stream to the open sea. This fascination shaped my life through fishing in my spare time and led to me taking an environmental science degree at uni and getting a job with the Environment Agency about 18 months ago. Fishing almost meant I didn’t get to uni though, and a commute to Brockenhurst college past hatchet pond didn’t always result in me resisting the temptation to stop and get the rods out!
My work at the EA, at least during the summer months, involves a lot of fisheries survey work. We carry out surveys on all of the major rivers in the Hampshire area, including the Test, Itchen, Meon and also some of the New Forest streams. In addition to freshwater surveys we also carry out sampling of fish species in Southampton water, with sites from Goatee beach at Eling, right down to Calshot.
I thought I would quickly focus on a couple of the more interesting things that we found last year. Our river surveys involve the use of an electric current which we can put through the water to stun the fish and then net them, this doesn’t harm the fish and is really effective at sampling the entire fish population in a stretch.
When looking at a small section of river it is amazing at just how many large fish there are in it. One survey that we did on the river Test last year produced 15 roach with the biggest measuring 38cm long and the smallest 25cm! To put that into context, one of the smaller fish which was weighed pulled the scales round to 2lb 2oz! Some of the larger fish were close to the magical three pound mark and this was from a 100m length of river!
We also occasionally see some oddities that you wouldn’t expect to find, a tench of about half a pound, more at home in an old estate lake, was found in a fast running stretch of the Itchen alongside brown trout and salmon parr for example!
One of the most interesting types of survey we do is estuarine netting for juvenile sea fish around Southampton water. This autumn we captured 17 different fish species from sites ranging from Goatee beach down to Calshot spit. The largest fish captured was a thick lipped mullet at Calshot which measured 60cm. We also had some big flounder from Goatee beach (see picture).
Cheers for reading,
Phil
