Like many fisheries in France, 2022 has seen us suffer the blight of the crayfish. This is a new problem for us and is the first time in our 10 year+ history that the little buggers are affecting the fishing.
We have been quite shocked at how we went from excellent early season catches through spawning time and into summer to be hit with a big crayfish problem in late June, early July. it took us a few weeks to get our heads round what was happening and then we kicked into action to try and beat the problem, purchasing numerous nets and setting them in both lakes to start taking down numbers.
Emptying 16 nets each day proved very fruitful and in the first ten days we took out over 2500 of the little critters. At last we are seeing numbers in Heron Lake dwindle and this has coincided with better catch reports which will be shown at the end of the last week of July. We are now working hard on Kingfisher Lake with most nets placed there to remove similar numbers from that lake also.
Hopefully, in another week or so we should be on top of the problem and we can then look at leaving nets in over two to three days to keep on top of the problem. Thankfully, catches do appear to be returning towards our normal and once again there are broad smiles on anglers faces as they get into some good carp action.
A valuable lesson learnt – just as you think everything is running smoothly, something comes along to challenge the norm! Watch out for our catch reports every weekend, hopefully with a few more fish on the bank this week!!!!!