Riparian habitat

The River Ayr has a variety of riparian woodlands along its length and it’s nice to see areas where standing deadwood is left untouched until it eventually falls naturally. Last week I heard the unmistakeable squawking of young birds in a nest waiting for their...

Black Rocks update

I&H Boland aim to complete the Black Rocks weirs this week. With low levels prevailing, they took the opportunity to install the fish pass blocks in the upper weir today. Each block weighed around 1/4 tonne so it wasn’t going to be easy but with a kerb...

Giant Hogweed appears on the Doon

Worryingly, Giant Hogweed has turned up on the River Doon. We were aware that it grows at the tidal pool at Doonfoot but Stuart from Doonfoot Fishings informed me today that it was now growing further upstream at Cambusdoon. Gordon MacDermid our CIRB project officer...

General roundup

I revisited Newmilns Weir yesterday during the spate to see how the banks were holding up and how the run and pool looked (from an angling perspective). The right bank at the top of the run looked as though it may suffer a small amount of erosion in the near future...

Spates and smolts

After a few dry weeks we finally have small spates on all our rivers today. This is the first rise in water levels for a few weeks and that of course means that any smolts will be heading downstream en mass. I headed to Dam Park to have a look at Nethermills Weirs...