This beauty was taken by anglers fishing on day tickets from the gravel ponds on Wednesday as part of a catch of 7 Pike, 15 Perch and 4 Carp. Yet again showing that if you want some great fishing W&DAC is the club for you.

Day tickets are available from Sheldon’s Newsagent  in Commercial street , Willington or directly from the club secretary, and if you enjoy your day why not join the club it’s great value at £75 for Seniors and just £20 for juniors.

Fishing for Trout and Grayling is looking very healthy on the river with Salmon and Sea Trout runs starting now that we have had some fresh water.

Remember we have waters at Eastgate in Weardale and fishing on Ferryham Croxdale waters at Durham, including the River Browney.

We have an unexpected but very welcome early summer lift in the river level. This morning the gauge at Witton Park shows a level of 0.64m, a lift of 36cm, approx. 14/15 inches in old money.

It’s not massive but should help to flush out some of the moss which was taking over in the low water conditions and hopefully encourage an early summer run of fish.

If you would like to monitor the river levels there is a link at the side of the page to help, along with a link to the Upstream fish counts where the May figures should appear very soon.

Tight Lines

It may look very pretty, early summer in full flower but it is damaging the river bank year on year.

Hymalayan Balsam … undermining our river banks.

It may look pretty but did you know that Himalayan Balsam is a threat to our fishing?

The problem is that it out-competes ground cover plants which help to bind the banks together and then when it dies back the banks are left open to increased erosion and in turn that erosion can cause the kind of fine sediment in the river that prevents spawning.

So, what can we do? What can YOU do?

The balsam is growing very quickly now, what we really need is to remove as much as possible before it seeds, and every little does help.

Ideally, pull the plants by the roots, snap the stems just above the roots and stack them to decay away from the water. That said, any plant removed is helpful so please, if you can spare a few minutes each time you are on the river bank to remove some Himalayan Balsam. If we can get a little help from dog walkers, ramblers, anyone on the river bank then every little really does help, every clump removed is a piece of river bank given a better chance.

We cannot control the rest of the river, but we can protect our own little stretch, maybe we can get other clubs to join the battle in future.

Thank you.