Ireland Small Stream

[Roy]

I had a choice of going to my niece's wedding or doing a spot at the Dutch Fly Fair.
Well, I cannot be in two places at once; there will be another Fly Fair and Stephanie won't be getting married again soon, I hope, so I went to Ireland

Flew into Belfast, volcanic ash now being dispersed to the four winds -
my good friend Stevie picked me up and we went down to Killyleagh where I spent my first night.
Thanks to Stevie and family for dinner and a bed for the night. Took a look at the Dibney River, for which we are holding the Irish International Fly Fair - to restore it to spawning status for the trout of Strangford Lough.
The previous week the guys over there had done a cleanup on thirty yards of the estuary stretch and had removed a right old pile of shite, tires, mattresses, carpets, plastic bags and the like
That exposed the river bed as three feet of compacted sludge.
Next step- ?? stir up that soup and get it out of the river.
Action pending.. but the smolts looked good, just now migrating out into the Lough.
Maybe the local Council will oblige soon by removing the detritus
Photos of Dibney River-
Stevie and
upstream

downstream


This river needs flushing out and structure adding, besides taking out enough trees to allow light in to the stream to allow weed growth.
We will be working on that.
That was Wednesday .

Thursday morning I got dropped in Belfast and got a train to my birthplace in North Antrim; had not been on a train for years, good views of a late spring entertained me on the trip.

It had been a hard winter up there. The snowfall was deep and it stayed for a long time, two or three months in places, a rare and nasty winter for Ulster
When the rainfall eventually came at the same time as the thaw there was some serious rainfall combined with the major snow melt.
The result was almost the same as in 1963.
The water had to somehow get to the Atlantic.
The river rose from her normal knee-deep ambling and bubbling bed.
Accessorised by an extra twelve feet of water she became a raging giant.
Once again she filled up her bridges, threatening again to push roads aside in her rush . Fortunately the bridges held.
Maybe the drastic dredging of the late '60's helped - the stream is bigger since then.
I went down to take a look at the result.
The first thing I remarked was that the dam I built below the bridge forty years ago and which stood as a monument ever since - had been washed away like some fine gravel.
Forty years on it just could not take the pressure of the white water and had shot off toward the sea. However, the interim forty years of weathering had formed a pool about two feet deep - now full of boulders washed down from above
I will have to transfer some weed into here for cover when I get back next month maybe build a wee dam again :)


Starting at the bottom bridge, I took a walk upriver. It was already heavily weeded despite the long winter.. so weedy that again the herons would have the upper hand - so I tidied a few areas to make pools between the huge beds of ranunculus growing from islands of accumulated silt, kicked out some heavy silt deposits - and made her flow a bit more prettily

further upstream

The fly life is phenomenal, olives, black gnats and stoneflies turn the air into a blizzard which vaporises with a chill breeze.

The river bed has widened by three or four feet which would lead to siltation.
There is a huge accumulation of boulders alongside the banks in the water, brought down by the floods
I used a few of these to place some structure and add flow and action to the stream and help her be self-cleansing.
Here is a pool I created by taking the overgrowth of weed out of the outside of a bend two feet deep, then dammed up the back to lift the water six inches and create flow into the next pool


Those of you who know me for a while are aware of my passion for this little stream which I rebuilt in the '60's when I was a wee guy.
It was strange to see this aftermath.
An excellent factor here is that there is a huge amount of rock in the stream bed.
A bit of restructuring may be in order on my next visit in July.

I did fish too, ten minutes, caught a dink,
they are still there.

cheers,
Roy

[BrkTrt]

Roy,

Great work on the stream restoration.

It's appriciated.



Thanks,

Brk Trt