Grumpy Bastard

The clocks have gone back, the nights are now long and dark and during the lighter part of today it mostly pissed with rain.  It’s the time of year when the marketing machines convince people to buy pumpkins which will be mostly carved up then thrown away in the name of a “tradition” that didn’t exist forty years ago.  These things are more than enough to make me grumpy but not the reason I’m pressing keys with steam coming out of my lugs tonight.

These last few weeks have seen the Norfolk Broads battered day after day after day by successive salt tides surging up the rivers.  There was a brief respite but then it started again leading to it becoming the worst documented salt incursion that has hit the broads so far.  On the Bure, saltwater has travelled as far as Salhouse in recent days and on the Thurne it has reached the very top reaches of the system, over the banks and into the road.  There are areas of sanctuary but we anglers wait for the bloated dead fish to start popping up in the next few days, only then will we know what we’ve lost.  Or will it be a case of finding out what we have left?  Fair play to the beleaguered EA staff on the front line getting their hands wet, who have been called upon to rescue and relocate thousands of fish in recent weeks.  To the EA six figure CEO’s and head honchos counting beans in ivory towers, shame on you, fucking parasites.

Salt surges are nothing new, we get many every year and although the current situation is unprecedented, these tides damage the already fragile freshwater system every single time.  Salt water rushes upstream and untreated sewage flows down, an unappetising mix.  Saint John Currie and other local volunteers have been warning us of the potential hazards of salt surges for years and have been proactive in seeking a solution too.  The salt surges could be prevented by using “Air bubble curtains” which to quote from Google;

• “Air bubble curtains: Used in river mouths, these devices release compressed air from a perforated pipe on the riverbed. The rising bubbles create a vertical flow that disrupts the stratified layers of freshwater (top) and saltwater (bottom), forcing the saltwater wedge to mix with and be carried out by the river's freshwater current.

Obviously these things cost money but actually not as much as you’d think, two to three million pounds or so I was told recently.  Still a big wedge of cash but not when compared to the income generated by Broadland tourism which is conservatively estimated at £400 million, although a figure of £711 was cited for 2022.  A lot of money either way.

I suppose it is naive of me to think that the business world will assist in any way, even if this may literally save their own skins in the long term.  As I previously mentioned, our rivers are being pumped full of shit which should not be news to anyone but how many people realise it is avoidable.  Whereas in previous centuries people polluted out of ignorance, British water companies are polluting for profit.  Instead of reinvesting in infrastructure these PLC’s creamed off the money and paid it to their shareholders, now we are going to be hit with bigger bills to pay for their negligence.  Without going too far into politics, capitalism is killing everything and if you can’t see this you deserve to be a Dodo.  But with my angler’s hat on what, if anything, is the Angling Trust doing about this?  The very fact that I ask this question at all speaks for itself.  A look on the AT website revealed a few banner headlines but no actual substance, which has been the case every single time a contentious issue has reared its head.  Angling Trust, the voice of our sport just mutters and whispers then hides behind the settee.  Another organisation putting hefty salaries into the bank accounts of the public school cronies whose actual role appears not to be representing anglers but appeasing us for their political masters.  More parasites.

Back to Broadland and with the salt water hopefully receding, my old sparring partners – the Broads Authority – have a dredger in position ready to start scouring the bed of Hickling in the next few days.  Dredging is another highly contentious issue which BA says it’s obliged to carry out, despite the environmental risks which I’ve written about too many times in the past.  In brief anglers believe there is a link between dredging operations and outbreaks of the deadly Prymnesium parva algae, the BA wites this off as coincidence.  If we accept dredging must be done to maintain the boat channels then the least they could do is use the safer suction dredging method.  But no, constraints on budget, common sense and morality see a bloody great crane sitting on a pontoon waiting to wreak havoc.  After what we’ve seen this month, if the Thurne system suffers a Prymnesium bloom in the next few months then I doubt it will ever recover, the jewel of Broadland really will become a swamp.  How then will Dr John Packman hang on to his job and another six figure salary?

My last subject of ire tonight is another recurring theme in the form of social media/Youtube three minute heroes.  From memory I marked the changing of the year with a detailed rant about these self promoting pricks so I won’t bang on again, I’ll allow myself one sentence.  Social media is ruining angling and is killing Pike angling.  Ah fuck it, I go fishing to get away from the insanity of modern life so it’s particularly frustrating when the madness invades my space.  Most of the above can be described as just more small examples of a world that is corrupt from the top down and this last paragraph one of the reasons they get away with it, people are too distracted by being busy charging around screaming “Look at me!”

However, most of the time my escape is successful, however you measure it, as I hope to demonstrate below.