Fishery Management Report
The weed clearing work party was run by Mick as unfortunately Keith could not attend as he had a major incident at work to deal with. We had a reasonable turnout of mainly match anglers – many thanks to Graham, Gary, Richard, Jon and Mick along with work party regular Les. Duncan , having a break from lambing turned up as well. The aim was to make swims fishable on all three ponds particularly bearing in mind some upcoming matches.
Graham and Richard concentrated on the weed that has grown up between pegs 1 and 14 on the Match Pond while Les and Gary worked their way around the rest of the pegs. Jon and Mick made a start on the intensive weed on the Middle Pond . It some became apparent that weed clearing on the Middle Pond would take something more than the normal method of using rakes to clear the weed, as the weed broke up easily and although the rakes would bring in significant amounts of weed it also left a lot floating on the surface. So if anyone can suggest approaches to tackle this these will gratefully be received. Therefore the team decided to concentrate their efforts on the Tench Pond so we would have at least two ponds which would be reasonably clear. The weed in pegs 1 and 2 was removed and also along the riverside bank and fishable areas were made in pegs along the road bank.
Whilst most of the team were weed clearing Duncan strimmed along the stream bank on the Match Pond and then turned his attention to the roadside bank on the Tench Pond.
This is the worst weed we have seen for a number of years, probably due to the very warm and dry spring. We would like to thank all those who turned up as without them the fishery will quickly become smothered in weed – as it is we still have to find a solution to the weed in the Middle Pond.
As in previous years we would recommend that if you are going to fish Hurston it is worth pre-raking your swim. Not only does this help keep the weed under control but it seems to improve the fishing as the fish will soon move in after raking to investigate where the water has been stirred up.