Restoration of the Wye

The once prolific river Wye has practically fallen off the salmon fisherman’s radar. From huge fish and lots of them, to next to nothing. But it is now on the verge of a major renaissance, as Stephen Marsh-Smith explains.

Buy land.... they’re not making it any more” so said Mark Twain. He might just as well have said it about salmon rivers. The number of salmon rivers on this planet for the moment remain about the same. OK, we’ve ‘discovered’ a few more recently - they were always there in the first place but to mankind’s immense shame, we have also ‘lost’ quite a number as well. Let us hope that maybe some only temporarily.

From the worldwide list there are certain rivers that are performing rather well. These tend to be in Iceland, Russia and Scotland, a few in Norway and Ireland, one or two in England and possibly one in Wales. This article is about none of these, since the river Wye has fallen from the premier league, rather as Accrington Stanley once did, to a position of comparative obscurity. This is not for the first time either. At the start of the 20th Century there was a well documented recovery from the effects of over exploitation. At that time rod catches dipped below 400. The catch was again that low in 2001, but this time for different reasons. In between there were some very interesting and productive years peaking in the ‘60s when 6,000 fish p.a. was a regular occurrence- more of which later.

Against the background of this massive and inexorable decline, those of us left who love the Wye could only contemplate one way forward and that was to restore the river to its position as one of the greats. Before I begin to explain what the problems were and what we did, I need to tell you why above all others, restoring the Wye is such a worth while exercise. I dedicate this piece to all the moaning Michaels, grizzling Geoffreys and lamenting Lyns that would have things otherwise.

The Wye, at over 150 miles from source to estuary, remains the longest salmon river in the UK (sorry Thames, Trent and even Severn, but for the moment you don’t count). Over that length, there is every characteristic or type of salmon water known. As you progress downstream, the river is joined by a series of tributaries: Marteg, Elan, Ithon, Irfon, Edw and Llynfi. These gradually increase its size and flow. You would expect to find the fast flowing, acid waters at the top of the catchment, with gravel runs, carved slate pools and pots - exquisite fly water and so you do.This gives way to a slower, gentler river once it leaves God’s own country. The catches and pools here are every bit as exciting to fish and possibly more productive. The English Ditch, as those less familiar with the intricate style of salmon pools in this section would have it, needs some careful interpretation. It’s all there, but quite lengthy pieces of unproductive water are often found between the better catches and pools.

The largest tributary, the Lugg, joins below Hereford and its character changes to a larger more circuitous and meandering flow across Herefordshire. At Symmonds Yat, for example, the river makes a loop of four miles to complete just half a mile. Just downstream of Monmouth, it is joined by the Monnow (not surprisingly!) and the gradient and size increases slightly as the river runs the final ten or so miles to reach the long muddy estuary that eventually enters the Severn under the old motorway bridge. After passing over what is today the best and most productive reach of the whole river.

Like all great salmon rivers the Wye has its own varied and distinctive character. In respect of its salmon run, here was something very special. Following the recovery years (say 1915 onwards) the feature of the Wye’s salmon run was that it was both early and comprised very largely of fish that had spent a third year at sea. The average weight of a springer in January to March was over 20lb! In addition, about every 105th fish weighed over 30lb. Every year 40lb, and even 50lb, fish were caught and lost. Beat Aramstone, accounted for two fish over 50lb in a single day. In common with Tay and Deveron the largest Wye fish - a Springer of 59lb - was caught by a lady, Doreen Davey (I think it must have been a man who weighed it and could he not have seen his way to making it 60lb?). In 1973, my first season, over 2000 fish at an average weight of nearly 20lb were landed by the end of March.

However, the Wye can be a most difficult mistress: perfect one day, high and coloured the next but yet when the rest of the UK enjoys a much needed downpour, nothing falls on the Wye. Despite these eccentricities, I am sure I don’t need to tell readers of this magazine why we are spending huge amounts of time and money on restoring this particular river. Now, for you to appreciate why we set about restoration in the holistic way we did, you should understand the essential mind set of those involved with the projects and that of the “advisors” on the touch line. The majority of today’s field sports, whether shooting or fishing is provided by species that benefit from intensive rearing. Pheasant, partridge and rainbow trout can be reared in prodigious numbers and shoved respectively into pens or lakes where their demise can be anticipated within a matter of weeks or months. There is no need for any of these to live longer than their sporting season and absolutely no requirement to breed in the wild or migrate thousands of miles for that purpose.

Who can blame all those who have come to associate good sport with big numbers of artificially introduced fish from believing that the same scenario can be repeated for salmon using a hatchery? It’s easy to explain natural breeding, habitat and predator management, plus control of exploitation works for grouse with a reasonable chance of belief. Not so with salmon. So the first fact to confirm is whether salmon really did survive in the huge numbers in the past without artificial propagation. Maybe Tony Robinson will pop up with his Time Team and show ancient fish culture units on each and every salmon river, but I rather doubt it! Our predecessors were telling the truth. Rivers were full of entirely wild fish. I saw them myself on the Wye. So it is reasonable to conclude something has gone wrong with the natural process. We believe that fixing these problems would also have much wider benefits than just for the salmon.

But what and where? Salar’s problem (using the football analogy again) is a game of two halves. Wye fish spend one, two, three or even four years at sea. If we can save them from being caught at sea, will there be more of them? It seems so obvious now, but it was far from clear to those managing things 20 years ago. In 2000 The Wye Foundation (later Wye and Usk Foundation) bought out the Severn Estuary drift nets and poatchers. The format used for this buyout was replicated in the larger North East Driftnet buyout in 2003. The Foundation also supplied evidence and support at the beginning of Brian Marshall’s EU complaint to remove the Irish nets in 2002. This year promises to be the year in which this work bears fruit.

Catches on the Usk next door did not mirror the decline on the Wye and have steadily improved since the early ‘90s. So sea survival isn’t the main problem and it was no surprise to discover the Wye’s predicament may be traced to its nursery streams. Their problems fall into the following categories: Barriers to migration, poor water quality, juvenile habitat degradation and overexploitation (this can be at any of the life stages). It’s the extent of each factors impact that is interesting. Our survey showed that by 1995, the Wye had 49% of its available juvenile and nursery habitat unavailable due to barriers, mainly manmade. In 1900 this was less than 8%. The available nursery area determines the ultimate level of fish production, all other conditions being equal.

A further 17% was so adversely affected by acidification that monitoring in 1985 showed no fish whatsoever were spawned in the extreme upper Wye and Irfon. It is likely that this area once produced fish that were the early running monsters of the past. Add to that the cumulative effects of a hugely expanding agricultural and forestry industry that was permitted to use the river as a conduit for silt, chemicals (especially sheep dip) and other waste. The effect of shading and excessive grazing of stream margins dramatically alters width and depth, hence reducing the number of places that can support the crucial parr stage (second year) of a salmon’s life. As each section was barricaded, trashed by animals or poisoned, so the total production of fish reduced.

The returning run faced a 100mile gauntlet of fishers anxious to maintain their catch statistics. Worming, prawning and shrimping did this at the expense of spawning stock. A senior fishery scientist estimated that exploitation of Wye spring fish exceeded 85% in the late’80s and early ‘90s! Any progeny was then further reduced by the previously mentioned problems. During their downstream migration, smolts, such as there were, faced an expanding population of goosanders and cormorants whose diet of coarse fish kept them from moving on when the parr dwindled. Their predations on a reduced population destroyed a higher percentage. All this accounts for the inexorable 30+ year downward spiral of salmon numbers and the nadir of 2001.

It’s so British to fix the shelf after the ornaments have fallen off, but this in brief is what we did to save the river: In 1995 our catchment wide survey listed barriers, sites of diffuse and point pollution. Between 1995 and 1998 our staff of two removed 500+ obstacles and built 12 fish passes.

David Summers, currently the Tay’s Fishery Manager was consulted and he took us into the complex arena of habitat restoration. It would take a book to describe all the problems involved in bringing about this crucial improvement. Change is a very resistible force in environmental management! However, we were well supported by three governmental organisations, Environment Agency Wales, Countryside Council for Wales and the Forestry Commission. That support was of a very tangible sort and together with funds from our owners and fishermen, we received consent in 1998 for our first EU funded partnership project. It had a total spend of £1.1 million and despite the onset of FMD, we restored and secured four important salmon spawning streams.

It’s the very size of the Wye that makes any operation seem small, so our next scheme included all aspects of mitigation. pHish,3 a £2.1million EU project, is expected to finish in 2008 but to date this partnership has made good the damage from acid rain, created six more fish passes, 65km of double bank habitat restoration and has developed a marketing scheme to get fishermen back to the upper river. On top of that we have devised three further projects to restore stream quality and access to the river Lugg and expand the marketing scheme into England. The final stage will be opening up the Monnow. Like the Lugg it is big enough to be a salmon river in its own right. The Environment Agency, under Peter Gough has already completed a couple of Rolls Royce fish passes on the lower Lugg and a third is planned this year (2007) for the Monnow. That nearly concludes the access part of the problem save for the Elan dams above Rhayader, but only Barnes Wallis could solve these!

So why is the river not bulging with fish? I don’t want any excuse to appear too well rehearsed but firstly, it will have taken over twelve years to complete the majority of these improvements. The sheer scale and parlous state required a quantum of repair to have taken place for fish to flourish. The second is that the level of fish stocks was so low that it takes one or two generations to build up. A generation of Wye fish is on average five years.

During the declining years, the drop in recorded densities of juvenile fish preceded the decline in adults. However, we are now seeing a reverse. Both the area over which juvenile fish are recorded is substantially greater but at many sites the density of young salmon has increased. In the areas where liming of the headwaters has reduced acidity, fry and parr are now well spread out. At one monitoring site, fry and parr of both salmon and trout have been recorded for the first time since the science of Electrofishing began. While the comeback of trout has been spectacular. Bags of 40 fish in a day have been made on our restored tributaries. I don’t think it will be long before the big fish return...

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