NACA River Fisheries

Fisheries

Introduction to NACA Ketteringham’s Fishery

One of Steve Harper's original Ketteringham's barbel The historic significance of Ketteringham’s Fishery, is such that it has maintained interest among the angling fraternity for some five decades. Featuring in several books by respected angling authors including Tony Miles, Trefor West, John Wilson, John Bailey, Dave Plummer, Steve Harper, Chris Turnbull and others, these Costessey and Drayton stretches account for many tales of piscatorial success. For two decades, the fishery was a veritable Mecca, especially for barbel fishermen, with anglers coming from all over the country to sample or indeed plunder its rich treasures.

The effects of earlier dredging and an increasing amount of agricultural abstraction were seriously undermining the rivers ability to provide its inhabitants with any amount of suitable habitat in which to spawn. The problem of the inability for several of the species to be able to sustain their populations, was compounded by the installation of a massive abstraction pipeline, to provide Norwich with water, positioned immediately upstream of the fishery. This then reduced the flow rate to a comparative trickle and the consequent deposition of silt and sand sediment, effectively ‘ponded’ the entire stretch.

The reason why WAG was created, the Wensum became a pond! Although big fish were still being caught, up to the turn of the century, the gradual decline in flow/habitat meant that there were very few, if any, juvenile fish ‘coming through’ to replace these.

All the efforts of the ‘Save the Wensum Action Group’ were unfortunately destined to have been in vain, though from some of those involved, the Norfolk Anglers’ Conservation Association was formed.

After its experiences of the pioneering habitat restoration scheme further upstream at Lyng’s Sayer’s Meadow, the NACA in partnership with the landowners, Environment Agency, English Nature, the Countryside Agency and others embarked on a large scale scheme to restore, or at least largely improve the riverine habitat at Costessey. In simplistic terms these works would be targeted at attempting to provide desirable habitat for several indigenous endangered species, in particular water vole, brook lamprey, bullhead, otter, white clawed crayfish and water crowfoot. In addition they would also largely benefit other fish species such as barbel, chub, brown trout, dace and roach.

Costessey Point Habitat Restoration Project - River Wensum

Recognised in the early 1980’s as one of England’s finest barbel and chub fisheries, since then, the Costessey Point reach of the River Wensum has suffered from the affects of habitat damaging river-dredging works and over abstraction of water.
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Sayers Meadow Habitat Restoration Project

Since the 1960s many English rivers have declined as fisheries as a result of the pressure of modern day lifestyles. Agricultural land drainage practices, overworked sewage works discharges, over abstraction of water and increased run off from urban developments have all had an impact. While many of the once grossly polluted rivers in the countries industrial areas have been cleaned up considerably, many of those in more rural areas have declined significantly. Nowhere has this been more noticeable than with the rivers of Norfolk, the Wensum, Waveney and Bure in particular.

In 1988 Norfolk Anglers Conservation Association took on 1.5 miles of the River Wensum in Norfolk as an experiment to see what they could do to improve the fishery. The services of Dr Richard Hey and Richard Smith from the University of East Anglia (UEA) were commissioned, who by combining their knowledge of environmental river engineering and fish population dynamics, were instructed to provide a practical plan to improve the habitat diversity of the river in order to increase it fish populations.

Richard Smith had undertaken a number of extensive surveys of non-tidal reaches of many Norfolk rivers which had convinced him that limited habitat was the primary problem behind their decline as fisheries. His research showed that some areas of the Wensum held good numbers of fish but others were almost barren while water quality remained consistently good.