2013 - General Project Update

We left the last update on the 2012-13 section of the web site with the news that the roach had started to spawn on our boards. Here we are at Christmas, and we’ve only just found the time to tell you how they did..... Sorry.

You’d think by now that we’d have gotten a bit of a handle on this here roach rearing lark. Well, I guess we have to a great extent, but continue to learn, sometimes on an almost daily basis. However, there are some things about Mother Nature that we will never ever get to grips with.

'Unpredictable’ is probably the most commonly used accusation, and yet you could set your clocks by some of her cycles..... Brutal, fickle, erratic, volatile, uncompromising, and the list of insults goes on; yet take a slightly more open hearted look and you will be taken apart with shear wonder at what goes into the making of what we so often take for granted.

Despite our extremely blinkered focus on our roach, our fascination and enthralment continues to be bolstered at every turn, and this all starts each spring with them gathering at our spawning boards, the sight of which rouses feelings of utter delight and relief that never diminish, no matter how many times we see it. We sometimes spend hours just watching them, especially as we remember that they are romping all over something we have made with nets and nails and planks, and has been leaning up against a garage wall all winter. 

It is generally accepted that the trigger to spawn each year is a combination of rising water temperature and increasing day length. This, fairly predictably, happens sometime in late April or early May (sometimes not at all, so some say), along with the arrival of the swallows, the grannom hatch, the first bumble bees and brimstone butterflies and the supermarkets trying to sell us BBQ charcoal and Speedo’s. 

Well, through our years of running the Roach Project and our close connection to the species we have managed to get to grips with quite a lot of roach and river stuff, but the one thing that leaves us open-mouthed is the fact that for four of the six years we have been doing this, the roach have spawned on our boards on exactly the same day, the 25^th April. Not only the same day each year, but throughout the river with differing water temperatures of as much as three degrees from the most northerly to the most southerly location, which are some fifteen miles apart. On one of the two years this didn’t happen, they were seen on the afternoon of the 24^th gathering at the boards, only for the river to flood through the night with the biggest rains for decades putting them off until the first week in May. The other year, due to an early spring ‘heat wave’ they spawned in the first few days of April. We think this is where the ‘sometimes not at all’ belief might have arisen. After all, who’d think to look for spawning roach before mid April anywhere?

It is, after all, just a fish; so how do they do it? And what happens on a leap year?.... Only kidding.

25^th April and spawning commences.

We are sure that some of the smaller ones here are our own.

On the same day the roach begin spawning

in a carrier ten miles away. Our small ones are

also seen here, though these are whoppers.

 

This fellow almost rolled over the spawning board. Exciting eh?

Just as an aside, we are in an extremely fortunate position (though with an arm-full of wasp stings, wellies full of mud and nose and eyes full of mozzies the size of pigs, we sometimes take a bit of convincing) in so far as our spawning boards reveal roach of all sizes that would ordinarily remain unseen. This year, as last, we saw a good number of smaller fish visiting our boards which, having ensured we reinforce the population from where we borrow the spawn are, in all probability, our own. We were also uplifted to see good numbers of big roach; some very big roach…….. Some, the stuff of dreams. We were blown away at the sight of at least five three pounders and many two's in at least three different locations.

It is now widely considered that the legendary ‘big Avon roach’ are a thing of the past. However, having seen what we have this year, we can state emphatically that the Avon is still doing what the Avon has always done. She is still making big roach. She just isn't doing it on the same scale.

So, if the seed of scepticism has germinated, we urge everyone to keep the faith. Avon legends are not only a thing of the past, but are of the present, and we believe of the future too...

25^th April again and the roach start spawning on our boards in the fierce flowing water at the
tail of a weir in the main Avon. One of these fish is huge.



                                 Some real ‘lumps’ visit our spawning boards.

With the commencement of spawning comes the excavation from the garage, cleaning and testing of all the component parts of the Brine Shrimp Hatchery, which is rigged up in rediness for the first hatchlings. The shrimp cysts are added to the bubbling water a few days after the first lot of fish are seen in the tanks, meaning their first live feed will be timed for when they are about five days old. The amount of feed is gradually increased over about a week and a half to allow the roach to finish hatching, when all twenty eight bottles will then be in use. It then continues to be gradually increased in volume per bottle to allow for the requirements of the, hopefully, growing fish. 

                Our ‘Brine Shrimp Hatchery’formerly known as Trevor’s conservatory.

We separate the live shrimps from the shells by simply turning off the bubblers to each bottle allowing the shrimps to fall in the water and the empty egg shells to float. We can then disconnect and drain the shrimps through pipes and valves under the bottles. It is important that we don’t feed too many of the egg shells, especially at the very early stage, as this would be like us swallowing a cup and saucer. We might get them down, but we’d have a bit of a job digesting them, and even more of a job passing them...

A close-up of the separated brine shrimps, ready for siphoning into jugs for

administering to our hungry hatchlings.

                                                   Siphoning jugs of goodness.

Sounds simple, doesn’t it?.... Well, it’s bloody well not! It’s all hard-earned guesswork and luck that has been finely honed over the years. But as this hasn’t been done before, our only option is to turn gut feelings and instinct into knowledge and experience.

The period between placing the spawn laden boards in the tanks and the wait for the first fish to hatch is a strange time, but one of great expectation, slight worry and anxiety, with nothing to do but fret and argue and wait for the starting pistol to be fired at the sight of the first little roach.

This year we used some of this time to take some more under water photographs with our little happy-snap camera in the hope that we could get a sequence of pictures showing the development and maybe even the actual hatching. So, from the moment the last board was placed in the tank, the camera was set clicking away from all angles. We must have taken, without wishing to exaggerate, about three thousand million billion trillion gazillion pictures...  And ended up with about a dozen or so that we think are truly amazing. Next year we’ll take even more.

Almost ready to pop. Eggs within hours of hatching.



Say hello to John, Paul, George and Malcolm.....
Well, you can’t call a roach Ringo now can you? Even we’re not that daft –

Ringo the roach?





Hatching commences and life’s struggle begins....
Starting with a little wriggle and a flutter within the egg, then a tail breaks through and
the little fish reverses out into the world hoping that he will be the lucky one.
Little do they know, these are all our lucky ones...

Immediately after hatching the roach stick themselves to the first inanimate object they

bump into with an adhesive gland on their head, where they stay to take up their yolk sac.



        The spawning boards and the sides of the tanks are perfect places to hang out.



                             After a few days they are swimming free, but hungry.

We mentioned in our last update on the 2012-13 section that we didn’t expect this year to be anywhere near as productive as last, due to the cold winter and lead up to spawning. However, we are delighted with the numbers we have in the tanks; slightly down on last year, but impressive, nonetheless. It just goes to show how adaptable and resilient roach can be, if given the chance.

Roach meet brine shrimps for the first time. Pink bellies show we got it right.



                                     At one week old, just tiny splinters of life.



                                             Growing well at a few weeks old.



               Pink bellies show the full little roach and the brine shrimp doing the trick.



From eggs, then tiny fragile splinters of life and on to this...Our ‘toddlers’ being spoilt

with one of their regular helpings of red maggots courtesy of Richard at Ringwood Tackle.

The two new twelve foot tanks (and the replacement six footer), delivered by our friends at the EA, were quickly levelled and bedded in and are now full of roach. One has been given half the ‘toddlers’ from the middle tank as we thought they might start to get a little crowded and cease spawning. These, you’ll remember, are the ones (270 in total) we kept back from the first spawning to see if we could grow our own adults right here at Project HQ, and to see if we could get them to spawn; both of which we are proud to be able to say we have done. The other is now full of last years’ leftovers, which are the ones left in the tanks when we drop them and net the one year olds for movement to the stews. They were earmarked for stocking into a flight pond we were due to be given for future cropping of adults and spawn, but this wasn’t deep enough so we kept them back and will be depositing them into the river early in 2014.

Work gets started on getting the new tanks in place and levelled.



             Neat and tidy and full of roach... and even less grass to mow. Mad, isn't it?



As we sign off now (mid December) we are in the throes of getting all the winter chores done like jet washing the spawning boards and stripping the netting off and making new ones from those that need it as the old wood begins to disintegrate from years of being hurled into the river then lovelessly stood against a garage wall for the rest of the time. We try to get as much of this done before the post Christmas panic grabs us as every day and week seems to get fired at us at increasing velocity the closer to April we get. During this time we will need to have prepared stews, moved fish, scrubbed and cleaned and refilled tanks and filters; will have argued, blamed each other for coming up with this bonkers idea in the first place, and eaten cakes and pies and pasties galore...

Aside from all the mucky stuff, we are preparing to move our one year olds from Project HQ to our stews at Bickton. We are also contemplating moving our ‘Toddlers’ from here to our big stew and let them live out their lives there. We’ll still be able to use it to grow the fish from one to three years for release into the river, but will be able to collect spawn from these old ‘un’s each year and let that hatch in different locations in the river.

To release these ‘toddlers’ into the river we would need to sacrifice thirty of them for a health check and we feel we have invested far too much in each of them to do this for such a small number that probably wouldn’t be the most street wise anyway, having lived in tanks for five years and lived the ‘life of Riley’ where the only competition regarding food has been for the space it takes up.

We are also setting things up for the release of our two and three year olds into the river, possibly in late February, in probably a fairly high profile event, just to keep the project on everyone’s radar. Hugh Miles is going to film it, so it will add yet another sequence to our little film. We might be getting some press coverage too.

So, much more BLOG material.