Post by Hoppy on Sept 27, 2007 16:45:04 GMT -1
Fishy tales from the river bank
Aug 30 2007 by Andrew Forgrave, Daily Post
Where there are fishermen, you’ll find poachers; and while Wales has a fine tradition for its angling, its has an equally scurrilous reputation for illicit fishing.
Back in 1778, Thomas Pennant wrote that the River Dyfi “abounded with salmon, which were hunted in the night by an animated but illicit class, by spearmen, who were directed to the fish by lighted whisps of straw”.
Little had changed by the time George Borrow toured the Welsh countryside, noting its customs and characters. In 1862, he described a court hearing at Machynlleth petty sessions, where a farmer was fined £4 for spearing a salmon in the Dyfi.
“In came a small, mean, wizened-faced man of about 60, dressed in a black coat and hat, drab breeches and gaiters, and looking more like a decayed Methodist preacher than a spearer of imperial salmon,” he wrote.
Despite mitigation by the defence, the magistrates were swayed by the prosecution’s description of the farmer as being “rather fond of fish, indeed of having speared more salmon than any other six individuals in the neighbourhood”.
Such characters were all too familiar to Emyr Lewis in his 39 years as a river bailiff. He can still picture night-time scenes of riverbanks illuminated “like Blackpool lights” by hoards of poachers who would descend on the Dyfi for its handsome spoils.
Back then, in the late 1960s, poaching was regarded as winter sport for the locals. Few took the odd fish “for the pot” but instead relieved the river of hefty quantities of blueback salmon and sewin. Some used nets, others relied on the tried-and-trusted spear which had landed Borrow’s farmer in so much trouble a century earlier.
Emyr, armed with just a truncheon and handcuffs, would creep up in the shadows, then announce himself in formidable tones. Many took fright and acquiesced feebly; others turned the spear from the fish to the bailiff.
“I had a few wrestles on the riverbank,” recalls Emyr, 64. “But that’s the good thing about being 16 stone – they can’t easily get up when you sit on them.”
Once a poacher held a knife to his throat. For Emyr, that was the end of his nice-guy approach. Over the next 20 years he patrolled Dyfi’s riverbanks with a Cheshire Police-trained dog.
In June he finally hung up his truncheon, a legend within the angling community. At a retirement party in the Tyn y Cornel Hotel, Machynlleth, the great and good of Welsh angling gathered to pay their respects. The New Dyfi Fishery Association, which has a lengthy waiting list, awarded him a lifetime fishing permit. He was the first ever recipient.
Even Environment Agency Wales (EAW), lambasted for cutting back on river enforcement, paid its respects. Usually only those with 40 years service receive a retirement gift of £450, but last Thursday a cheque thudded on Emyr’s doormat in Llanbrynmair.
Despite the clandestine nature of his job, all the poachers knew where Emyr lived. Gangs would drive past his house, checking to see if he was in. He’s lost count of the number of silent phone calls he received: the click at the end of the line usually signalled a poacher was checking his whereabouts.
“I’ve had a few things thrown at the house,” he said. “Once someone chucked a tyre through the porch window.
“My wife has put up with so much. She’s been my unpaid secretary, taking calls from anglers all over Britain wanting to find out about the fishing on the Dyfi. She probably knows the river as well as I do.”
The Dyfi has provided the two loves of his life: the river, of course, and his wife, also called Dyfi. They been together for 42 years and people still crack the tired old joke that he married her for her name.
At the start, in 1968, he worked for the Gwynedd authority. It was replaced by the National Rivers Authority, then EAW.
The job’s changed too. River bailiffs are now enforcement officers and they’re armed with all manner of high-tech equipment, from videos to night-vision cameras and radar patrol boats.
There’s also far fewer of them – just four, down from 24. Anglers are less than impressed and their criticism of the EAW has been unrelenting. The Federation of Welsh Anglers is a vocal critic, while former Dee bailiff Keith Williams has spoken of a “deep malaise” within the EAW.
New river watch schemes have been set up in North Wales, encouraging anglers to shop poachers, but the resentment largely remains.
Emyr had his own differences, mainly over operational efficiency. At the risk of being labelled a Luddite, he told his bosses that bailiffs were not effective unless they were on the ground.
He said: “Towards the end we became buried under piles of paperwork.
“There were health & safety reports, job assessments, time sheets, boxes to tick, river reports and prosecution paperwork.
“I used to preach that the environment was outside the office, not in it.
“Perhaps I was a bit old-fashioned, but I believe that to do the job you’ve got to be on a riverbank, talking to farmers and anglers.
“If you’re sat in an office in Bangor, there’s no computer that’ll tell you what’s really happening on the Dyfi’s 400 miles of river and tributaries.”
Unlike many anglers, however, he believes poaching is on the wane. In contrast with the Dyfi’s heyday, when the river “abounded with salmon”, these days there simply aren’t enough fish to justify the risk of being caught.
Criminal gangs can still net £300 worth of fish for a night’s work, but the industrialised poaching of Wales’ rivers peaked in the 1980s when Emyr headed a national enforcement taskforce that criss-crossed the country with a dozen men, dogs and rubber dinghies.
Netting remained the prime modus operandi, and the teams would paddle along rivers until their drag-lines snagged a net. By the 1990s the preferred method was sodium cyanide, which sucked the oxygen from rivers and killed everything in them.
In 1995 Emyr led what he regards as his crowning achievement: Operation Armstrong, named after Brecknockshire solicitor Herbert Rowse Armstrong, who poisoned his wife with arsenic in 1921.
“A gang from Manchester had hired a fishing lodge and the fishing rights along a section of the river Elwy,” said Emyr.
“They were there several times a year and were cleaning out the river each time. We mounted round-the-clock surveillance before moving in. When we searched the gang’s homes we found photos of them posing with fish going back over 10 years.”
Emyr himself is an accomplished angler, having captained the Wales fly fishing team. But for 40 years he has denied himself the pleasure of river fishing, sticking to lakes and reservoirs instead.
Anglers can be a suspicious lot and Emyr didn’t want to provoke comment from anyone seeing him land the fish he was paid to protect.
He still casts out at least once-a-week and has just jetted off to Canada for a post-retirement holiday (“I’ve never been that far before”). His suitcase included a travelling rod.
His riverbank wanderings continue, especially downstream of Cemaes Road to cast a critical eye at Railtrack’s river-bashing engineering works.
Nor has his vast knowledge been entirely lost. While one son, Mark, doubles up as an ambulance driver and rally sports navigator, the other, Peter, is now a full-time bailiff on the River Dee.
“I made a few enemies in my career,” said Emyr. “But I’ve also made plenty of friends. Luckily not all poachers took their arrests to heart!”
Aug 30 2007 by Andrew Forgrave, Daily Post
Where there are fishermen, you’ll find poachers; and while Wales has a fine tradition for its angling, its has an equally scurrilous reputation for illicit fishing.
Back in 1778, Thomas Pennant wrote that the River Dyfi “abounded with salmon, which were hunted in the night by an animated but illicit class, by spearmen, who were directed to the fish by lighted whisps of straw”.
Little had changed by the time George Borrow toured the Welsh countryside, noting its customs and characters. In 1862, he described a court hearing at Machynlleth petty sessions, where a farmer was fined £4 for spearing a salmon in the Dyfi.
“In came a small, mean, wizened-faced man of about 60, dressed in a black coat and hat, drab breeches and gaiters, and looking more like a decayed Methodist preacher than a spearer of imperial salmon,” he wrote.
Despite mitigation by the defence, the magistrates were swayed by the prosecution’s description of the farmer as being “rather fond of fish, indeed of having speared more salmon than any other six individuals in the neighbourhood”.
Such characters were all too familiar to Emyr Lewis in his 39 years as a river bailiff. He can still picture night-time scenes of riverbanks illuminated “like Blackpool lights” by hoards of poachers who would descend on the Dyfi for its handsome spoils.
Back then, in the late 1960s, poaching was regarded as winter sport for the locals. Few took the odd fish “for the pot” but instead relieved the river of hefty quantities of blueback salmon and sewin. Some used nets, others relied on the tried-and-trusted spear which had landed Borrow’s farmer in so much trouble a century earlier.
Emyr, armed with just a truncheon and handcuffs, would creep up in the shadows, then announce himself in formidable tones. Many took fright and acquiesced feebly; others turned the spear from the fish to the bailiff.
“I had a few wrestles on the riverbank,” recalls Emyr, 64. “But that’s the good thing about being 16 stone – they can’t easily get up when you sit on them.”
Once a poacher held a knife to his throat. For Emyr, that was the end of his nice-guy approach. Over the next 20 years he patrolled Dyfi’s riverbanks with a Cheshire Police-trained dog.
In June he finally hung up his truncheon, a legend within the angling community. At a retirement party in the Tyn y Cornel Hotel, Machynlleth, the great and good of Welsh angling gathered to pay their respects. The New Dyfi Fishery Association, which has a lengthy waiting list, awarded him a lifetime fishing permit. He was the first ever recipient.
Even Environment Agency Wales (EAW), lambasted for cutting back on river enforcement, paid its respects. Usually only those with 40 years service receive a retirement gift of £450, but last Thursday a cheque thudded on Emyr’s doormat in Llanbrynmair.
Despite the clandestine nature of his job, all the poachers knew where Emyr lived. Gangs would drive past his house, checking to see if he was in. He’s lost count of the number of silent phone calls he received: the click at the end of the line usually signalled a poacher was checking his whereabouts.
“I’ve had a few things thrown at the house,” he said. “Once someone chucked a tyre through the porch window.
“My wife has put up with so much. She’s been my unpaid secretary, taking calls from anglers all over Britain wanting to find out about the fishing on the Dyfi. She probably knows the river as well as I do.”
The Dyfi has provided the two loves of his life: the river, of course, and his wife, also called Dyfi. They been together for 42 years and people still crack the tired old joke that he married her for her name.
At the start, in 1968, he worked for the Gwynedd authority. It was replaced by the National Rivers Authority, then EAW.
The job’s changed too. River bailiffs are now enforcement officers and they’re armed with all manner of high-tech equipment, from videos to night-vision cameras and radar patrol boats.
There’s also far fewer of them – just four, down from 24. Anglers are less than impressed and their criticism of the EAW has been unrelenting. The Federation of Welsh Anglers is a vocal critic, while former Dee bailiff Keith Williams has spoken of a “deep malaise” within the EAW.
New river watch schemes have been set up in North Wales, encouraging anglers to shop poachers, but the resentment largely remains.
Emyr had his own differences, mainly over operational efficiency. At the risk of being labelled a Luddite, he told his bosses that bailiffs were not effective unless they were on the ground.
He said: “Towards the end we became buried under piles of paperwork.
“There were health & safety reports, job assessments, time sheets, boxes to tick, river reports and prosecution paperwork.
“I used to preach that the environment was outside the office, not in it.
“Perhaps I was a bit old-fashioned, but I believe that to do the job you’ve got to be on a riverbank, talking to farmers and anglers.
“If you’re sat in an office in Bangor, there’s no computer that’ll tell you what’s really happening on the Dyfi’s 400 miles of river and tributaries.”
Unlike many anglers, however, he believes poaching is on the wane. In contrast with the Dyfi’s heyday, when the river “abounded with salmon”, these days there simply aren’t enough fish to justify the risk of being caught.
Criminal gangs can still net £300 worth of fish for a night’s work, but the industrialised poaching of Wales’ rivers peaked in the 1980s when Emyr headed a national enforcement taskforce that criss-crossed the country with a dozen men, dogs and rubber dinghies.
Netting remained the prime modus operandi, and the teams would paddle along rivers until their drag-lines snagged a net. By the 1990s the preferred method was sodium cyanide, which sucked the oxygen from rivers and killed everything in them.
In 1995 Emyr led what he regards as his crowning achievement: Operation Armstrong, named after Brecknockshire solicitor Herbert Rowse Armstrong, who poisoned his wife with arsenic in 1921.
“A gang from Manchester had hired a fishing lodge and the fishing rights along a section of the river Elwy,” said Emyr.
“They were there several times a year and were cleaning out the river each time. We mounted round-the-clock surveillance before moving in. When we searched the gang’s homes we found photos of them posing with fish going back over 10 years.”
Emyr himself is an accomplished angler, having captained the Wales fly fishing team. But for 40 years he has denied himself the pleasure of river fishing, sticking to lakes and reservoirs instead.
Anglers can be a suspicious lot and Emyr didn’t want to provoke comment from anyone seeing him land the fish he was paid to protect.
He still casts out at least once-a-week and has just jetted off to Canada for a post-retirement holiday (“I’ve never been that far before”). His suitcase included a travelling rod.
His riverbank wanderings continue, especially downstream of Cemaes Road to cast a critical eye at Railtrack’s river-bashing engineering works.
Nor has his vast knowledge been entirely lost. While one son, Mark, doubles up as an ambulance driver and rally sports navigator, the other, Peter, is now a full-time bailiff on the River Dee.
“I made a few enemies in my career,” said Emyr. “But I’ve also made plenty of friends. Luckily not all poachers took their arrests to heart!”