What a productive day we had at the Manor Pond work party on Saturday.

We split into two parties, and removed two trees from the lake, discarded fishing line from the trees surrounding the lake, cut back the bamboo along the pathway, filled two bags of rubbish found around the lake, and restored the two swims in the photos.

Thanks go to George, Dale, James, Charlie, Mick, Dave, and Liz for helping me achieve this.

Oh, and I forgot to mention the delicious cakes we enjoyed during the day !

My follow up visit to our Padworth fishery on Thursday 11th April, was a resounding success.
90% of the brambles are now completely gone at the top end of the fishery. This just leaves some tree thinning to do on my next visit.

New fence posts were fitted along the boundary fence in the car park. This has improved the parking facilities by gaining about another 1m along that side. Most of the fence was leaning inside our car park, which wasn’t suitable as the top section is barbed wire.

A quick visit to our Yalding Two fishery today, to clear a tree which had blown down during the winter.

Once the bank dries up to improve personal safety, I will return with a long arm pruner, to remove much of the growth in the river. Some will be left as habitat.

This will definitely improve the fishing from this swim on the river Beult.

A visit to our Manor Pond fishery, to move some of the wood chips from the car park to two of the new swims, has helped to make our members fishing experience much more comfortable.

There’s still quite a lot left in the car park. So, a few more swims will be the beneficiary of those.

Our attention then turned to our adjacent river Mole fishery.

We cleared a few fallen trees which were blocking paths on sections one and two.

Our landlord has also cleared all the brambles and coppiced sections of tree from the area around our gate. Access to the second section, has been made much better for our members and day ticket anglers.

It wasn’t the Good Friday I had originally planned, but an impromptu visit to the CALPAC Padworth fishery on the river Kennet proved to be very productive.
After wading through the breech in the river, I cleared about 70% of the brambles at the top end of the fishery, allowing more light into the river.
This will benefit the Ranunculus, which in turn will benefit the fish and invertebrates.
This really is the beginning of a new dawn for our fishery. With the fish stocking annually from the Kennet Hatchery, and long overdue bank clearance. Everything is looking much more promising for the future.

An impromptu visit after work to the Yalding Two fishery, which comprises of a stretch of the rivers Medway and Beult, means that it is ready for the opening day of the season on Friday 16th.

It was just a quick tidy up of the access to swims, which had already been prepared. Followed by the reopening of a swim on the river beult, which had become overgrown.

Thanks to the Stew Pond bailiffs for rebuilding a swim at the Stew Pond and tidying up many others.

The pictures are an indication of how hard they worked in the extreme heat.

What a treat it was to have three willing Thatcham AA members assisting me on the Padworth fishery work party.

They turned up with a ride on flail mower and two brush cutters to tackle the pathway and swims in preparation for the opening day on the 16th June.

The pictures below tell the story. What a fantastic effort on the hottest day of the year!

The work party was attended by myself, one CALPAC member, and a member of public who initially informed me of the Japanese Knotweed growing along the fishery.

Anna, who was that member of the public, also helped out with litter clearing and helping the CALPAC member Ken to clear a few swims of excessive vegetation.

I cleared the end swim using the brush cutter. I then donned the relative spraying ppe and gave the Japanese Knotweed its first dose of systemic weedkiller.

Although not well attended, just myself and one other member, an enormous amount of work was carried out.

A new fence was installed next to the lift bar entrance to the car park.

Lots of tree limbs were removed from two trees at the rear of the car park. This created parking spaces for a further three cars.

Swims were cut in preparation for the new season as well as a pathway linking the first six swims in section two.

Finally, non-native weed spraying was carried out along section two where required.