Welcome to the long anticipated netting of Richardson Lake at Marsh Farm on February 6th 2017. We have 3 videos in total going all around the lake. This is to establish just exactly where the problem of disappearing small fish and lack of medium sized fish lies.

Sparsholt College carried out the netting with their students on a calm and mild day in early February. There would be some surprising and unsurprising results. Plenty of tench, crucians but precious little sign of bream or skimmers. The 2nd netting,

from around peg 13 to peg 35, wasn't very productive. Plenty of crucians, quite a few tench and 1 solitary bream! Small first year class roach and bream were present and were recorded weight-wise and length, but not in big numbers that where seen last year.

There were precious few 2, 3, 4 and 5 year class fish present, apart from an odd couple of perch and roach. Our final video below, shows the netting of the long straight down to peg 53. The disappointment continued as we only took two more bream from the last pull.

Again, the smaller fish where conspicuous by their absence. The decision to redress these missing fish was immediately undertaken and it's expected that come early/late spring, we should see an improvement in the make up of catches.

It's planned to re-net late October to establish the actual and accurate stocks present, as more stop nets will be employed to cut-off the gaps. In the meantime future plans are to integrate more suitable stock from Johnson's into Richardson's.

Since this netting, fresh stocks have been delivered to Richardson lake and with Fishery Management actively seeking ways to prevent further predation, it's hoped that come late Autumn, we can review the stocks on a more regular basis.