Fishery Management Report

Work Party Hurston January 2009

Our first work party of the new year was not well attended despite promises from other that they would turn up we only actually ended up with 6 people. All their faces were strangely familiar being the people that make the effort time and again and although we achieved a lot with a few more hands we could have done so much more.
Anyway down to what was done.

We concentrated our efforts on the match pond and split into two groups.

On the mainland; Nelson, Fred, Steve J and Geoff took some of the trees down that were restricting the swims not only on the bankside but also along the stream bank as well. This should open up the swims nicely and make the lake a little easier to access. Taking the trees out along the stream bank should serve two purposes; for those anglers that like to use pole on the pond it will make shipping easier but also it should mean that we are less likely to lose the bank with these trees going over. Unfortunately as each tree came down they had to stop cutting in order to clear up before moving on to the next one. With some more hands another team could have been clearing. Therefore we didn’t get as far as we would have liked and we will have a lot to do and the next work party.

The other group consisted of Vince and yours truly and we went over to the island with two main goals; to burn all the cutting that have sat on the island since last years work parties and to remove a section of an overhanging willow. We got the willow down and managed to burn about half the stuff on the island, we would have got on a lot better with an extra pair of hands as trying to keep the fire going whilst dragging stuff to it proved impossible to the degree that Vince decided on the strategy of starting another fire. Vince was on his own as I had deserted him to cook a few sausages and bacon etc. to feed those that had turned up.

Next tree maintenance session at Hurston is on February 15th it’s the day after valentines day so those of you with wives, girl friends or even mistresses will have done your duties the day before and you will be raring to get out for a bit of fresh air.

Let’s see a few more turn up next time and see what we can get done!