The Making of a Cotswold River Keeper - Episode #15 with Mark Cameron

Sparsholt College rivals reunited! I studied Fishery Management at Sparsholt College with Mark. It didn't take long to recognised how employable he was right from the get go, he was the man to beat!

It's been great to catch up with Mark in recent years, both sharing the same passions for angling and rugby! Marks story is different to most of the other students that I studied with, having listened to his calling in his late twenties, making that pivot towards his passion and making the leap back into education later than most of us.

Now the river keeper of an enormous Cotswold estate. Mark tells the story of how the opportunity of a lifetime came to be.  A true traditional country gentleman that is fully deserving of the life that was once just a pipe dream.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I always wanted to join the army. Went through um the selection process and failed the medical on day one. That all got shit canned, so I decided to go to Spar Shalls. I'd said um that I would like one day to be a river keeper, knowing full well that those opportunities are very, very few and far between. Something I learned through through tragedy, I suppose, through losing people, is not to be afraid to say yes, just give it give it a go, you know, and it's probably the best thing I've ever done. There's a really thriving population of fish in that river. In my work and career, this is by far and away everything I ever wanted, really.

SPEAKER_01 0:31

You're very much a countryman. Your country skills that I've learnt this morning is is pretty vast. Do you think that's a dying art?

SPEAKER_00 0:38

I think there's not much thought given to the wider environment. And there probably doesn't need to be. If you're going to a carp fishery that's within a fence and there's 20 swims and there's 20 guys, how much influence can the weather or the wind or atmospheric conditions or anything have?

SPEAKER_01 0:51

I just assumed your job was hooking tampons out the river, I didn't say.

SPEAKER_00 0:55

I haven't had any of that yet, but the phone rang one evening. Oh, there's poachers at the top end, so off I went in the truck. Naively, I stopped the truck on the bridge being an idiot. I uh I I took the truck off the bridge, turned around and thought I'll have another look. And before I got back to the bridge, they pulled their vehicles out and blocked me in, surrendered the truck, and they wanted my phone and they wanted everything. Um shit, here we go, kind of moments. I'm about to get filled in. There is so much business done on the banks of that river. Deals are done, multi-million pound deals are done. The landscape we live in has had man's hand in it for so so long that if we took our hand off the wheel now.

SPEAKER_01 1:34

Welcome to the Fish I'm going straight away. Welcome to the Fishery Fast Lane podcast. I've come just out the road to Fairford to my old college mate, Mark Cameron, who's invited me up to show me round the estate that he's working on now in Fairford. Uh what's it called, Mark?

SPEAKER_00 1:50

It's Fairford Park.

SPEAKER_01 1:51

Fairford Park.

SPEAKER_00 1:54

Uh there's a larger estate, so it's 9,000 acres here, made up of uh four and a half thousand roughly at Fairford, and then similar, a little bit more at Hatherup, so yeah, a couple of estates combined 9,000 acres.

SPEAKER_01 2:06

So what to introduce your role on the estate?

SPEAKER_00 2:09

So I'm the river keeper on the Colm. So the river Colm, which runs from up near Chartham, wiggles its way down through the Cotswolds and then spills into the Thames just above Lechlade. So on the estate, we've got um around about three miles of Main River and then a few sort of side carriers and other uh channels that that's my responsibility. So I'm the keeper on on three and a bit miles of yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:34

So Mark and I both went to Sparshot College. What do you remember what year it was?

SPEAKER_00 2:38

Oh nine, I think. Yeah, we started in 09.

SPEAKER_01 2:41

Okay, so that was the fishery management sport fisheries national diploma we were both on. That's where I met Mark. And Mark, you were my menace at college. My menace, my nemesis. Menace. I don't know what's works. Because uh I knew I knew you were I'm gonna I'm gonna uh insult you straight away that there was a crowd of you that were had more life experience than perhaps some of us us coming out of the little bit older than you. And I knew that you with a bit more life experience, a bit more hunger, a bit more direction of and kind of had a bit more foundations behind you, a bit more experience, and I knew that I was at Spar Schult to uh for a job in fisheries management. And I knew someone like yourself, Mark, was going to be top of the pile, and I was gutted because Viv and Simon on the second year, I think, when they were in quite the early days of their VS Fisheries, and uh they were looking for some help on the farm for a winter, and and Mark and these his his group of mates, they all got to go and work with with Viv and Simon, and I was ah that's what job I needed. I need to get in that as I was oh blurry, Mark.

SPEAKER_00 3:43

But we suit you now. You you would have uh it was hard work as you know now, anyway. Yeah, crikey. But yeah, we got um so in 09 we started, it would have been the following winter, I think. Yeah, myself and a couple of others were lucky enough. And I I then went on and done two or three seasons with them doing that. Yeah, I wouldn't want to do it again there.

SPEAKER_01 3:58

It's yeah, it's one of those jobs, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 4:01

Once you've done a winter, even a few weeks of it, and it's uh I mean there's not a lot of reward in it, other than the enjoyment and the banter and all the uh monetary reward, there's not a huge amount in it at that level.

SPEAKER_01 4:10

No, I can imagine like when I when Viv was on the podcast, I think like it's great seeing your fish that you've been growing all summer for like I'm I do it on a very small scale, don't I? But when Viv's doing it every single day, or the boys there that are every single day more and more cut, and uh it is just a case of rinse and repeat. And I don't know if I envy them now the job I thought I wanted back at college, but yeah, there's no there's no glamour in that. No crikey. Can you um paint a picture? Because I didn't know this part, what what life was before Sparshell College for you?

SPEAKER_00 4:40

So um I went to Sparshell at the age of 26 as a mature student. So I'd been um I was a trainee coach builder initially. Uh I had grand plans. If I got right back, uh all the way through school, I didn't think I needed school because I was gonna join the army. I'd always wanted to join the army. Um, 16, went through um the selection process, got all the way down to Purbright for my selection training and and failed the medical on day one. Right. Yeah, so they found a uh a regular heartbeat, which they sent me off into London, have that checked out. That was fine, nothing wrong with that. But they also discovered uh I would have been nearly 17 at this point that I was colourblind. Now I'd gone all the way through my life not knowing I was colourblind. Right. I suppose you you see a colour and you just assume that's how it always looks, but I failed all the tests they tried to put me through there. And that didn't stop me going into the army, but it took off the jobs list. The one thing I really wanted to do, which was to go in and join the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers. I wanted to do something and come out with a trade as well as trouble the world and you know serve a country. Anyway, that all got shit canned, and um I didn't really know what to do because I hadn't come out of school with any good grades, I hadn't done what at school at all. Never worked for me, school, classrooms, and all that. So ended up going into a traineeship as a coach builder, so building showman's live in trailers. Um so every skill you can imagine from carpentry, metalwork, painting, um, all that joinery, all that kind of stuff. Great. I had a good couple of years doing that. Um and then I ended up leaving there for a higher paid job uh as a forklift truck driver, actually. And I did that for the next oh five or six years, maybe more than that. It would have been about five years, I suppose. Yeah, working nights, 12 hour nights, four on four off, which was good for me fishing, lots of time off in a week and stuff. But it was a good wage, you know, it was sort of from the age of what would I have been, 1920-ish, right and through until my mid-20s, doing that. Um good money and all the rest of it. But then that folded, the business went bankrupt and they laid us all off. And I thought, well, I'd always had I'd always been a mad keen angler from the age of about six years old. I'd always been into fishing. And I'd been trying to do the Institute of Fishers Management um course, you know, they do a distance learning thing, the IFM. I'd been trying to do that to get a foot on a ladder whilst I was driving me fortift every night, and I wasn't really getting anywhere with it. I didn't have enough motivation, I was earning enough money to go out and be having a good time of an evening and weekends, and I was into my cars, so I was wasting money on that. And um the IFM stuff wasn't I wasn't really getting through it. So when we got made redundant, we had a payout. I thought, well, rather than waste it, I'll fund my next two years and retrain. So I decided to go to Spar Shalt. So rather than sign on, I went and um went to Spar Shalt on the fish management course. Right. And uh that was me then from 2009 through until I think we finished it, would have been 2011 or 12, you know. Um so yeah, that was what sort of drove me down the sparshol route. Right. Yeah, and of course, back then uh I don't know if the say if it's the same now, but the government then would rather than have you signing on to make unemployment figures look better, they would much rather have you in education. So it was all fully funded. So I had my redundancy money plus uh all the bursary funding that the college provided through the government for an adult traineeship.

SPEAKER_01 8:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:02

So and I had digs at college, but I didn't really stay there that much, but I had the option of the digs at the college, and um that sort of funded the next the two or three years we were at college. Yeah, there was a lot of grants and hand-ates and bursary funds for tr everything from travel to food and everything.

SPEAKER_01 8:17

So yeah, is when we've addled it around the estate today, and we'll get on to all of this later, but when you show me around the estate, I've obviously been involved in in carp fisheries and and fishery management side of things, and uh walking around this morning when you show me around, I think how long I've been of like thinking this is what you want to do, because it's it's not until you see like the what you're doing here and the the landscape that you're working in that it I really I realize now that it's such a different management model to what I'm used to, and I learned a lot from you just walking around this morning. But when we were at college, I remember you saying that there was a dream that you had said on day one that you had to stand up and uh tell group.

SPEAKER_00 8:57

We did, yeah, we did this introductory piece, didn't we? The first so we have like your your first week at college is all about orientation, finding your way around and introducing you to people and tutors and whatnot. And I remember on day one we all had to stand up in this function room and um went around the room, stood up, introduced yourself, and I get up and I say, Oh, I'm I'm Mark, I'm from the Forester Dean, and um, you know, talked a little bit about my river angling and my dream would be to, you know, they they sort of wanted you to come up with a job that you thought you might want to go for at the end of this course. And I'd said um that I would like one day to be a river keeper, knowing full well that those opportunities are very, very few and far between, maybe maybe even fewer and further between back then than they are now. There seems to be an a little bit of a shift in the industry in recent years where um keepers of old have moved on and and there's a younger um cohort coming through, which I'm sort of part of now. But yeah, back then when I said that, it sort of was nothing more than a pipe dream, really. It's a river angler. I thought, oh, one day it'd be great to have my own river to look after. Yeah, as long as before. So yeah, that was now looking back, it was quite a just a little moment in time that you look back and go, Oh bloody hell, I actually got there.

SPEAKER_01 10:04

Yeah. So did Sparta serve you when you left the college there, would you say that you came away from college with opportunities?

SPEAKER_00 10:11

Yeah, I think so. I confidence more than anything as well. You come away from there with um with great uh great contacts, which I'm I'm still in contact with lots of people, um, not only um students that we were at college together with, but also I still speak to Viv. It's rare that I speak to Scotty these days, but I speak to Viv. Um so you and you've got this network, and it's wider than just the people that you studied with. So the the neighbor in a state here, um, the keeper there, he was at Spar Shalt with us doing the game management. So I sort of know him through Spar Shalt. Our own gamekeeper here on the estate, he went to Spar Shalt. So you've got these old school ties, because there aren't that many institutions around really that provide um the sort of scale of things that they do at Sparshalt. They do cover a lot down there, you know. Being agricultural university, you sort of a lot of people you meet in and around the industry, oh, I went to Sparashalt. So I think it did. Yeah, and I I loved it. I never really got on with school, like I said. And um, I was a bit worried about going back into the classroom and any form of education, but what I found was going back into something that I really had a passion for that overcame all of those issues because I was I was no longer just learning math science, English geography, I was learning about something specific to my interests. Yeah. And uh, I didn't drop a point over the whole course similarly to yourself, distinction and everything and aced it all. The only um the only thing I didn't win was the silver trout, which obviously You like to remind me of a silver trout, don't you? Well the silver trout would be quite fitting now on the river, wouldn't it?

SPEAKER_01 11:37

You don't want what I've got. My grandparents have uh they've got it on their um on their mantelpiece, me with this silver trout, and of course, with a chubby, spot uh spotty, horrible little thing, screams virgin on the side there mantelpiece. Keeps the kids away from the fire. So I don't ever publicize that picture. Hello, this is our mate, we've got it on the uh podcast. Is my ground?

SPEAKER_00 11:58

Yeah, we're recording with a four-month-old Springer running around who's not that not yet learned how to behave.

SPEAKER_01 12:03

So yeah. Well okay, so after Spar Show, where did you go from there, Matt?

SPEAKER_00 12:08

Um I toyed with the idea of staying on and doing the um the degree course, but um whilst I was at Sparshall, I met my missus, my new wife, and um I just couldn't really stand the idea of another couple of years being um away um or staying away or being away at college or any any longer. So I um I'd been lucky enough to get some work uh of my own um private work with um a stillwater fly fishery as as part of a larger farm, which I became very, very in uh involved with, um, as well as that I had a few other um clients of my own. So I decided well I'll just set up by myself. So I did I set up what was back then I called MC Aquacare, which is tiny, just a one-man band, me and my van cruising around doing a lot of domestic work, as it turned out to start with. Yeah um garden ponds, you know, that sort of thing. Um a couple of clients I had were were were larger scale, but still not fisheries, but just large ponds and small lakes within the grounds of their properties, which was good. You know, it it paid the bills. It didn't, you're never gonna wear millions in the industry. Uh that's something I've definitely come to realise. It's not gonna um, you know, the streets aren't paved with gold. But it was great and it gave me the freedom to work where and when and how I wanted, which was nice. Um, and as I went on down the line with the with the farm and the and the trait fishery, I became more and more involved with that to a point where um I gave up a lot of my clients and he was paying me then just to work on the farm, look after the farm, the campsite, and the fishery. I did that for a couple of years then. Um but we I'd proposed to my with my missus in the meantime and um needed more. I felt like I needed more money chasing that Yankee dollar. But um and I ended up um moving away from the industry a little bit. Um I took some work in a sawmill, still ran my other my other bits and pieces alongside it. So I kept my hand in with with syndicates and fisheries and some of my domestic clients as well. But that became more of a weekend sideline kind of thing. Um and I would still halp out down at the farm in bits and pieces when I could. But um, yeah, so I I actually ended up moving away from the industry for uh quite a while, really, a good number of years. I ended up working for the national grid, which I did for five and a half years, inspecting power lines again, really good money. And at the point that I started working for them, we hadn't long had our our son. So again, kids are expensive, and I hate to keep coming back to money, but money makes the world around. And at the time I felt like I needed, you know, needed to be providing more than I could through the bits and bobs I was doing off my own back, really.

SPEAKER_01 14:51

Yeah, yeah, I did look very similar when um when I was working on the farm, I started because it's obviously I knew after coming out of college and uh being real keen and I'd done well in college, and then then working on the farm, I remember I put some ads in the paper for little pot and cleaning stuff, and and I got phone calls and you're going out and quoting for bits, but I just didn't I didn't have enough want to do it, and that's why I sort of didn't ever go any further with that. But I remember at your college when you were looking after water right from when I was you know, I looked up to to you because you were already looking up at water uh looking after water, which was what we're all going to do. You were miles ahead of everyone at college.

SPEAKER_00 15:30

But it was never really it was never really um the type of water as you were, you know, it was al I always felt like it was a means to an end. Yeah, just it was just keeping enough of a toe in the pond to to keep you interested. It it wasn't really um what I where I'd seen myself, you know. Right and I couldn't really scale the business as much as I'd love to. I'd go and look at at big jobs, you know. I remember looking for big jobs at big holiday companies that had lakes and rivers and bits and pieces, but I couldn't see a way that me as a one-man band could take on those kind of bigger scale projects.

SPEAKER_01 16:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:01

Maybe if I'd have been a bit braver or if I'd have had somebody with a bit more business background, maybe that could have steered me a little bit and may have gone somewhere, but it always just felt small scale, really.

SPEAKER_01 16:11

Yeah, I'm I'm sure what we'll we'll get on to like where you are now with the you're very much a countryman. Your country skills that I've learnt this morning is is pretty vast, and I I didn't know you knew half the stuff that you knew, and you can't learn that of college because I didn't believe, you know. Well, I don't know. I could just be So where have you got all that from? Loss loss made you sort of go down that route of country living and and living off the land, as you call it. What's the sort of inspired that? Where does that come from?

SPEAKER_00 16:38

Probably probably mostly from um I so I grew up in the forest of Dean, and I I was just like my son is now. I always wanted to be outside, and I was lucky that my granddad, uh bit of a local legend, he was almost like uh our like our version of David Attenborough in a way. He was always out making films, filming wildlife, building hides. And I spent a lot of my youth with with him. Um similarly, my um auntie, her partner, Rob, he he was a big influence on me, and he was an angler as well. We were always out fishing, you know, making like my son does now, running around sharpening sticks and you know, all that kind of stuff. But um, I was always mad keen on the natural world. Um, and and that really just took over from everything. I would I would take days off school to go, I would bunk off and go fishing, I would bunk off and go bird watching, I would bunk off, yeah, anything other than be at school. I would be out in the woods or down the river, and and that was really how I spent my childhood. My grandparents had a house in the middle of the forest, miles from anywhere, and I would ride my bike there several miles to get there, and I would just tell my mum I wasn't wow, and I'd just stay at Nan's house, just out in the woods, tracking deer. I had my own camera by this point, and I would be out photographing deer and all that kind of stuff, and then that since has just translated into you know the the deer management stalk and all that kind of stuff that we do now as a matter of daily life on the estate, it just fed into that. Um but I just consumed books and television programmes and documentaries, anything to do with the natural world, yeah, country pursuits, all that kind of stuff, um got into air rifle shooting, which led into shotguns, which led on to where we are, which it just is such a broad I of I often feel like I know everything, yet I know nothing all at the same time because I know lots and lots about lots of things, but I haven't got a specialism, and I think although that can be a real asset having a broad base knowledge, I sometimes think, well, I wish I had a real specialism, which I don't really feel I've got, but yeah, I've got a very broad knowledge of a of the British countryside and its wildlife.

SPEAKER_01 18:39

Yeah, but this is a thing which I think is coming more prominent with social media and stuff, with people that are putting their opinions and and their thoughts forward, which have have got time to go away and research it, whereas they have almost a louder voice than somebody like you and me who are out there doing it. And it's kind of like how it seems like knowledge trumps experience now. Whereas experience, like experience, you I'd I'd sooner listen to somebody that's been out there and done it rather than somebody who's gonna give me loads of facts and figures that they've copied off of uh an article somewhere.

SPEAKER_00 19:12

Yeah, it it's very easy. You you like you just said, actually, you can Google anything and find the answer like that. Yeah, we didn't have that luxury. I certainly didn't have that luxury growing up. So the the way you learn things, the way you put two and two together was actually being out in the field and and doing that, you know.

SPEAKER_01 19:26

And as on a previous podcast, actually, I was having a similar conversation with a lecturer, a Dan Hadley Hurford, and he was we were talking about AI now, how everyone's asking AI so much, and AI is going out and scraping the web the the internet for information and providing a conclusion. So it's if that information it's scraping is inaccurate, yeah, like then either we're gonna get worse and worse data and hopefully we're gonna rely on actual experience, so like you and I being out there doing stuff, which hopefully is gonna keep the uh keep things more consistent. But that does worry me with all the the AI stuff.

SPEAKER_00 20:00

Um can't really beat like boots on the ground unserved experience who can't really beat that.

SPEAKER_01 20:06

No, but when when did this this opportunity come into the picture for you that was Daniel June?

SPEAKER_00 20:11

Really recently, only this um in the last six months. So um it came through um but again, one of those old school ties with Sparshall. Um I knew John the previous keeper through a friend of ours, Sam, who was also a keeper. Um, and years ago he'd he'd had a he'd had a Spaniel from me years ago, and um I'd I hadn't I uh John was a mate and Sam was a mate, and he was looking for a dog, and I had a dog I needed to get rid of. So he had a uh a working gun dog off me for for nothing. I was happy that it was going to the right home and I had to get rid of the dog. Um I didn't feel right charging him for it, so I let him have the dog. And then all these years later, John's decided to move on from the position on the river, and um he's called me up and sort of said, Look, I'm moving on. Do you want to stick her out in the ring for this? And I was just couldn't turn the opportunity at.

SPEAKER_01 20:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:59

To have a keeper's position in your home county.

SPEAKER_01 21:02

Yeah, well, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:03

Um, but it like I said, it was ju it just came from um from contacts, keeping in touch with people, maintaining a base of knowledge, and also never turning down opportunities. I don't uh something I learned through uh well through through tragedy, I suppose, through losing people is not to be afraid to say yes, just give it give it a go, you know. And um it's it's easy to say no and worry that you'll get it wrong, whatever. But um, I think I've been pretty good in recent years at not doing that. And it not that I've pursued this dream and chased it down because I don't I don't feel that I have. It's not like I have made this conscious decision to never give up on becoming a river keeper.

SPEAKER_01 21:42

In a way, it's just through relationships and contacts and experience that it's come eventually quite organically come my way with a little bit of karma with yeah, giving a fully trained gun dog away for the it's slightly said though when we spoke earlier that it's uh it's Not gonna make you the wealthiest man in the pl planet, but it's you had to sacrifice a lot from your previous job and where you were and it sort of settled in further in Zagosta?

SPEAKER_00 22:09

We were down in the forest at Dean, so it's like we're we're up on the opposite edge of the county now, really. So we've travelled right from the western edge of Gloucestershire over um over to this side where we're nearly into Oxfordshire up here, really.

SPEAKER_01 22:20

Yeah, so like we said, we it is well how was a big sacrifice for you, and it it's not one of those roles that it's gonna be you're not chasing the the Yankee dollar, so it's anything.

SPEAKER_00 22:31

Obviously, that is offset by the fact that um we're in a a keeper's cottage, which is nice, and you know the the job came with the house, they came with a truck, and all the toys I need to be able to do my job effectively is provided, very well resourced. I've got to say, the estate they do provide everything that I need to do the job to the best of my abilities. Um but it it isn't the case that um I'm a keeper and I've always been a keeper. It's something I've always wanted to do, and I've made sure I've I've got the knowledge and the skills to be able to do that, you know, through previous experience. But on as we sit and speak now, I'm six months in um to this to the new job up here, and it's probably the best thing I've ever done, you know, work-wise, not taken out of the equation like big life events, you know, you can't jump having kids and getting married and that. But uh in my work and career, this is by far and away everything I ever wanted, really. Uh and to be 50 miles from what I call home then, you know, back down in the forest, I can still within an hour be with friends and family, pretty cool. Yeah. It's not to say one day we won't end up in the highlands, we definitely will, but at the moment this ticks every box.

SPEAKER_01 23:34

So yeah. So you started in the spring of this year, yeah, 2025. So was would you have been chucked in at the deep end with it being the driest year year on record or summer on record?

SPEAKER_00 23:45

Well, back in March when I started, obviously, we didn't know what was ahead. The summer has been uh the driest ever, I believe, on record now. But I wouldn't say I was chucked in at the deep end. I'm lucky in respect that um the old keepers still works on the estate just in a different job role. So it's dead handy having him. Uh any questions or queries I've got, he's only a phone call or a cup of tea in the yard away from you know getting a bit more information on that. Um it just took a little while, and there's still areas now where I'm not 100% familiar with this of being a state, you know, but it just took a little while to familiarise myself with ways around access points, where all the hatches are, all the various different components of the river. But um it it didn't feel like a huge step. I think because I've always been on rivers, I've always been a river angler, I I think that sort of I never feel happier or more content than when I'm in the waders in the river. Right. It just seemed a seamless transition.

SPEAKER_01 24:40

Because your angling was a lot of mixed species, wasn't it, before you got the job. Yeah. Has that sort of played a role in your management, or is that because I I can't say that uh we both went through sparshop at the same time. I can't say that I came out with much I didn't feel like equipped to to step into a role like you have done now. But and just speaking to you this morning, actually, the uh some of the management plans of the river, which are so distant from fishery management and managing a still water, you were explaining about your funning willows into the water, whereas we're often encouraging fisheries take them out, and to create an interesting environment and and flows, and and well, you'll be able to speak a lot better about the about it than me. But has that been easy to pick up, or were you equipped before you come into the role?

SPEAKER_00 25:28

Yeah, I think I always because angling for me was never just solely about the fishing and what you catch. I think angling for me has always been about that connection with the natural world and understanding the environment. So if I caught something or if I witnessed some behaviour somewhere, I always wanted to know why. So I always then delved deeper into the whys and wherefores of why that fish is behaving the way it is, or why did I catch there and why were the conditions, you know, what dictated what happened. So I'd always gone much further into my angling than a lot of people would do in trying to understand the environment because I think that puts you ahead of the game. If you look at um if you look at somebody who if you liken angling to hunting, you need to fully understand the landscape, the conditions, the contours of the ground, the atmosphere, everything, the weather, the animals' behaviour, the whole thing. So I kind of look at angling in more from that sort of side of things. So I think recognising where an environment needs a hand and where it doesn't. I already sort of had that with regard to, like you say, putting obstacles or woody debris or you know, kneeling a tree into the river, anything that I do, uh I kind of already recognised where it could be a benefit, where the river needed a bit of help, or or or where I could just sort of keep my hands out and say that doesn't need anything other than the grass kind of.

SPEAKER_01 26:46

Do you think that's a dying art though? Yeah, because it's not being passed on like uh just reading from you this morning how you're reading the wildlife and what's happening around the whole landscape and not just fish like we're sort of doing.

SPEAKER_00 26:58

I think it's too blinkered an approach these days, and it's driven largely by the industry, by the tackle industry, I think, because everyone's funneled down that route of you do this, you do that, you do this, and this is your result. And it's all really just to get you by in something to you know, it's easier for them to have a wall stacked with tackle and things to you know just provide that, and yeah, everyone watches it on YouTube or reads it in a magazine, and that's what they do. I think there's not much thought given to the wider environment, and there probably doesn't need to be. If you're going to a carp fishery that's within a fence and there's 20 swims and there's 20 guys, how much influence can the weather or the wind or atmospheric conditions or anything have? Yeah. All you've got is a 10-meter wide strip of water in front of you, and that's it, you know.

SPEAKER_01 27:41

But there's no you were telling me this morning that there's no commercial motive for this fishery, is there? Not really. What are the goals of the your role?

SPEAKER_00 27:48

We've well, we've got a 20-man syndicate on the river, um, and it's not really a commercial venture. So the uh uh it's owned by a charitable trust, the whole estate is, and um it's all really about best practice. So it's about setting an example of not just the fish and the fishery, but the wider landscape. We've got tenant farmers, we've got woodland that needs managing. Everything that we do is all about like stewardship, stewardship of the land, so the the way that it should be done, um, best practice. Um, and that's kind of where where the where the river's being taken and where I'll continue to take it is down that route. We don't want to be pouring hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of trout in every season, just Anglers happy. It's more about having a sustainable wild fish population and managing the the ecosystem to support that. And you know, and like you've seen today, we've got otters on the river, we've got little egrets, great white egrets, herons, we've got uh kingfishers, we've got lots and lots of things on that river there, predate on fish and anything else that lives in the water as well. Yeah, but there seems to be a balance where there's room for everything to coexist because of the management practices sustaining that wild fish population.

SPEAKER_01 28:57

Yeah. What would the motive be for your employer though to employ somebody to put somebody in a role when there's not it's not no I mean the fishing doesn't really cover my wage.

SPEAKER_00 29:07

No, so as what maker and off the fishing doesn't really cover my wage, but it I think it's important for them because um the river as much as you could sort of take your hands off completely and just give it over to nature, which a lot of people try and do these days, don't they re-wilding and all that? The landscape we live in has had man's hand in it for so so long that if we took our hand off the wheel now Fairford would probably flood for a start because the the the the mills up and down the river, the hatches that I control, the water levels, all of that needs maintaining. So you need to be very observant and reactive to to what's happening with the water levels, with all that sort of stuff. Um, so I think there's a lot of that, um, being good landlords kind of thing, you know, keeping on top of everything.

SPEAKER_01 29:56

I'm Ben Pinneger and I'm your podcast host. For those of you that don't know me, my business is called BP Milling, where I specialise in producing plant-based pellets for fisheries that break down fast. I farm my own carp entirely on my pellets, and you can see me doing exactly that over on my BP milling YouTube channel. So if you're enjoying the fishery fascinating content and you haven't discovered the BP milling YouTube channel, then there is loads more content like this where we deep dive on the science behind running fisheries, how to run fisheries in a healthy way, and how I farm my car up. There's loads of videos of me doing exactly that. If you're interested in finding out a little bit more about my pellets, we have an online shop where you can purchase the feeds directly, delivered to you in bulk or in single bag quantities at www.bpmilling.co.uk. You see you read a lot about in the the news about the pollution, and I just assumed your job was hooking tampons out the river. I didn't set you here. I would add any of that yet, but do you see that though?

SPEAKER_00 30:57

Do you see the issue in on your stretches where you Yeah, not I I've got to be honest, it's not that prevalent on here. It is an issue. We we do suffer with um with um with pollution. It is mainly um sewage. Um obviously you get a little bit from agricultural runoff and stuff anyway. But um, I wouldn't say I hate to be one of these that just jumps on the bandwagon and banging this drum of everything's knackered, it's all you know, the rivers are dead. They're not. There's a there's so many good news stories out there, so much positive work being done out there, but it always gets overshadowed by all the the naysayers and that everything's dead, it's pollution. Yeah, it you know, if I told our rods that and they walked up the river, they'd probably believe me because they don't see what I see. They're not on the river every day, they don't have the eyes on it like I do.

SPEAKER_01 31:42

Yeah. We've seen crayfish, you've got crayfish traps out there. Are they do you see a big issue in? I know you're quite early into your your role here and you haven't quite done a full 12-month stint yet. But do you see the crayfish, the impact that they have on your stretches or the parts that you control?

SPEAKER_00 31:58

Yeah, the biggest problem is like we spoke earlier, is that the the burrowing they do in undermining the banks really, the the siltation and that leads on to the banks get eroded far quicker. But with regard to the um the the I think a lot of people um talk about the um predation of fish eggs and that kind of thing, which I don't see as such a huge issue on a on a on a game fishery when when our fish are spawning in the colder months. Obviously the crayfish are not uh they're not active, but they're in their burrows. So um I don't have an issue with that. Um, but it is mainly the tunnelling they do in the banks. Now the river is low, you've seen today there's a whole network so honey gun burrows, and the water comes up now, as we will go through the winter, floods into those burrows, undermines the bank, and the bank slips in, and then we end up with problems with siltation over the spawning reds and whatnot.

SPEAKER_01 32:45

Do you think that they are keeping the otters off of the fish?

SPEAKER_00 32:47

Yeah, definitely. They do me a big favour. They do me a big favour. Everything I see is uh everywhere where I have the otters, and we've got lots, um, all their spring is just full of crayfish shell. Uh we saw today on the bridge, um, chewed up crayfish from the otter, probably within the last couple of nights. So in the in the time I've been on the river, he's only I've only found two sizable trout that the the otters taken out. Right. They're they're doing me a favour with the crayfish. Yeah. I don't really see a problem. If you think like most of my wild trout are are probably less than 10 inches and they're built like racing snakes, yeah, those little trout can get into areas of refuge along that river that no otter's ever going to get to. So I feel like uh uh a wild-brained trout is pretty well equipped to get away. The the two fish that I did find were they came about a week after we had stocked some brownies up the river. So we put 150 fish in this year just to keep the rods happy. And um of those 150, only 33 actually got caught you know by our rods. Um but um that just goes to show if you put a a a two-pound stocked brown fish into a small river like this, they they can't get out of the way. You know, there's nowhere fish can hide.

SPEAKER_01 34:01

Do you see any succession of juveniles coming through or not?

SPEAKER_00 34:04

Yeah, uh it's difficult to say. We've not done any population surveys as yet. The weather this summer was just made it a no-go really. Yeah, um, I think it would have stressed the fish out, it would have done more harm than good. But um when I walk that river, which I do every single day, I don't do it all from top to bottom. I haven't got enough errors in the day to do that continually. The beats that I choose to walk day after day after day, uh, Polaroids on, creeping along slowly. There are dozens and dozens and dozens of fish in that river. Right, and grayling, everything from the size of your finger up to the length of your forearm, yeah, everything in between, um, they obviously see you long before you see them, but you see them shooting off little groups, little shoals, five, six, ten fish, little then you get the bigger fish on their own. There's a there's a really thriving population of fish in that river.

SPEAKER_01 34:49

So Yeah, do you think they rely on your management to reproduce? So like if you if you weren't in your role and things were left to neglect, you think they would be less successful?

SPEAKER_00 34:59

Do you think that's possibly be because of because of some of the hard landscaping that's been done along that river, certain areas of it, probably the bottom third of it, would be completely, I think, devoid of fish. If if we hadn't done anything, if if none of the work the previous keeper had done, uh and none of the work that I've continued to do this summer had been done, those areas would just continue to get wider and wider and wider, and there'd be more and more um you'd have more and more of the bankside plants encroaching on that, you know, facilitation. I think you'd lose far more habitat than we can create by doing what we do. Right. I think, yeah, I think to take to take us out of it, I think we would, you probably would see a dip in because I think the variety would go. I think you'd end up a lot of quite sluggish, um, quite overgrown. It probably wouldn't suit trope particularly well. It might suit other coarse fish species, but we haven't got those here. Yeah, right. So I don't I don't think we'd see an increase in numbers. No, I think it'd go the other way.

SPEAKER_01 35:55

Well, I can certainly see the uh your your hard work with the the amount of mowing that we've done a good bit. Cut another grass. Yeah, so it just looks beautiful. And you imagine if that wasn't done, you'd hardly know there's a river there. I know, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:07

And I I do get a little bit me and the keeper have a bit of back and forth on the um on the mowing, and and it is something I am certainly gonna do differently um next season, I think, where where we've got really wide, grassy rides. I'm gonna reduce that down. I can't really see the value in having something this what would it be, parts of that pathway are 10 metres or more wide, you know. And it is just like a lawn, and I think, well, there's not there's no variety of habits out there, there's no biodiversity there. It's better just to go up and down with the mower once, two two-meter wide path, and then leave everything else.

SPEAKER_01 36:39

Are you steered as a river keeper by any organisation to tell you how to do your job?

SPEAKER_00 36:43

No, there's always help and advice out there from organizations and bodies, but not here, not not at all. It really is my playground. I can choose how, when, and why I do what I do, which is great to have that freedom. Yeah. Um it would be I wouldn't want the job if if the land agent said to me next season we're doing it this way and you're stocking 1500 trout, that would be the it for me. I'd be on looking for somewhere else. I'd have got no interest in filling that river with stock.

SPEAKER_01 37:12

No, right. And how do you see the landscape of the angling for that sort of uh trout fishing and fly fishing?

SPEAKER_00 37:20

Um It's declining probably, I think. If you look at the like the age, the demographic of the rods on the river, they're all retired most at the into their seventies, you know. And I see that on other other parts of other rivers where I'm familiar with and other areas that I fair. It does seem there does seem to be an issue with feeding younger anglers into um to the game side of things.

SPEAKER_01 37:47

Do you see opportunity or a way of getting younger?

SPEAKER_00 37:51

Yeah, I do. I do here. We've got we've got some ground here which I think uh would uh would suit. Um I'm not saying I want to become an angling teacher, I really don't want to be surrounded by loads and loads of people who haven't got a clue every day. But there there is space here, I think, for like a an angling school. It's been done in other areas within angling, you've got with within fly fishing where you've um got sort of like fishing schools set up. So there is potential, but that again would mean we'd have to s write off areas of that river and and stock fish in there because no one's gonna want to come to learn to fish and then not catch a fish at the end of it. Yeah, it would almost need a a pool somewhere, but then that's totally different to to upstream dry fly fishing on a you know limestone river like that. So that transfer is really different. That skill set is completely different. You know, you standing on a put and take trout lake, fluff chucking with whatever's on the end, something sooner or later is gonna grab that. While you translate that, you take that same person and put them in that river where we walked this morning.

SPEAKER_01 38:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:49

Say, right, now go and do that in flowing water with the wind with overgrowth either side, and you're in the river, you're no longer on the bank, and yeah, you you haven't got that vantage point of being high above and spotting a fish, you're just walking your way up that river. I think it's a really, really complex um skill that you know. I think it's just difficult to give youngsters or somebody interested that way. And also it's bloody expensive.

SPEAKER_01 39:12

Is it?

SPEAKER_00 39:13

You know, ticket prices on these places are not cheap, you know, it's quite prohibitive.

SPEAKER_01 39:16

So yeah. Is there like etiquette in that kind of game fishing that like obviously in a carp angling is kind of scruffy old buggers, aren't we? But when you look at shooting and golf, and I'd imagine trout fishing to be a kind of unwritten rule that to to to look like, you know.

SPEAKER_00 39:35

Yeah, I I wouldn't I don't know if there is there kind of is there's a perception of it because that you see, like you know, J.R. Hartley is people's, you know, and tweeds and all the rest of it. And that, to be fair, a lot of my rods are straight out of that textbook. They they do turn out all right, they've got ultra modern breathable waders on, but underneath that is corduroy trousers, often salmon coloured corduroy trousers, you know, yeah, a little gilet and a Czech shirt and a little flat cap and all that.

SPEAKER_01 40:04

Yeah, because as much as I in the cup world or the course fishing world, as much as I hate the whole um how scruffy it's all becoming, I guess that is kind of being like that. We are making it less abrasive for people to come into that mark, aren't you? And it's missing it.

SPEAKER_00 40:20

Turning up in a comfy truck, flinging your rods out and falling asleep for a weekend.

SPEAKER_01 40:25

So I'm probably my own worst enemy in my snobbery of thinking how uh how scruffy carp fishing is.

SPEAKER_00 40:30

But um It doesn't have to be though, does it? You can get some of the stuff that's out there now. Like you can go out in because I mean, I spend my work in life and I have for the last 20 years. I'll always buy the best boots, the best trousers, the best waterproof cycle. Yeah, and you can go out in thousands of pounds worth a kit, you know. Yeah. And carp anglers are no different. They are no serious carp anglers would would all want the the the appropriate kit for the appropriate situation.

SPEAKER_01 40:52

Yeah, I'm the same. If you looked in my van, you'd be ill if you went in now the wrong time of year. It's horrible. I I'm by no means tidy, but um, but I just think that when you look at like hunting, um, if they were all on the back of their horses in tracksuits and in flat peak caps and stuff, you they wouldn't last a minute. So you think uh yeah, or are we uh perhaps a little how are we perceived by the public, perhaps is the is a better question, but but no, it's um I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 41:17

I I always quite like I like to it sounds silly, but I I fish a lot in in Scotland on the rivers up there for the grayling and there's something nice about I love being in the river anyway, but I if I've got my waders on and a nice shirt and a hat, you know, I just feel Yeah, yeah. I don't know. It's it's it isn't it no one says you have to do that, but I feel just too much. Yeah, I know I love the tradition of it, you know, so never pooping, but yeah.

SPEAKER_01 41:43

Yeah. But going back to the role of river keeping, I've learnt a lot that a lot of it with what you do is you're a countryman and the crafts that the skills that you have to have, and you kind of have to be a bit of a jack of all trees, uh it was really refreshing actually hearing your son Isaac who was with us and tearing about in the gator and getting us from A to B and opening gates, how keen he is to in uh cease to follow in your footsteps, it seems, with his interests and sharp instincts as we're getting.

SPEAKER_00 42:11

Yeah, he he loves it. And that's been great. That has that's been that was one of the big drivers for coming up here was was to give him a life that I I you know that I would have loved to have lived.

SPEAKER_01 42:21

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 42:22

When I was his age, you know, he's just got bigger toys than I ever had now. Like he's out in the truck and in the gator and in the tractor, you know, every opportunity he can he wants to come out.

SPEAKER_01 42:30

Yeah, we're good. Yeah, yeah, it's good. That's like like you think a lot of the the lads that uh are perhaps not so lucky to be Fairford's a beautiful part of the world, so I found a job here and to bring in up a yeah, it's a lovely back garden.

SPEAKER_00 42:42

I mean, it is just he's got a a a playground that you you'd think any kid would be jealous of, but I think the reality is these days m a lot of kids, whether it's because they've never seen it or haven't had the opportunity, a lot of kids just haven't gotten interest, have they?

SPEAKER_01 42:56

You know, and I think we don't because it is a traditional kind of I guess profession, if they want to call it that, but like the what the jobs you have to do, like you have to control populations of certain species, like your perhaps your your corn rates and stuff. And we were talking in in the pub as we had lunch about how perhaps Isaac at school, people knowing that his dad is is a river keeper, how is it no?

SPEAKER_00 43:20

Is he telling everybody the second thing that comes out of his mouth after a hello is my dad's a river keeper? Yeah, he's quite proud of that.

SPEAKER_01 43:26

So is there any like public perception of what you do and then the modern sort of how we're told to live our lives and people looking in on what perhaps we do in in the countryside to control populations? Is that seen as sort of scumbaggery?

SPEAKER_00 43:43

It probably is, but I wouldn't know because I don't put myself in those sorts of circles where I'm gonna have that kind of feedback. And also what I do day to day, whether it be with cornants or crayfish or foxes or anything else, you know, mink rafts on the river, all that kind of stuff. People don't see it going on and I don't publicize the fact that it's going on.

SPEAKER_01 44:03

So No, it's almost like got to the point now where if I ever go and see your mates and and we go out into for a night out or whatever, if if if you start speaking to people and you they hear that I'm from a dairy farm, you almost feel like sorry to tell 'em. It's like you feel like they're they're not gonna like what I'm that um because it's just the way that we're told to believe that that that that it's unethical is is what I'm probably what I'm searching for. But yeah, I just think you know, I just wondered if that was anything that's crept into either Isaac's side of it and went.

SPEAKER_00 44:31

No, it hasn't he's pretty good, and I'm always really open and honest with with him. If I'm uh a great example of this, yesterday we were out with the dog up the river and he's flipping stones and he's catching bullheads like he did today. Well, yesterday he'd sharpened a stick and he flipped a stone and there was a bullhead led there, and he said, Oh, I'm gonna stab it with my spear. And I said, Hang on, you're not. Why? Why are you gonna kill why? What's the purpose? If you kill that bullhead, what purpose does that serve? Yeah, and that stopped him dead in his tracks. And I could see him think, and then he didn't, he wouldn't do it. Yeah, you know, I'm not saying I've I've done the same thing when I was a kid. I used to catch him with forks, yeah, and I'd go down the river and I'd put them on a big oak and I'd fish reels with him, but that's wrong. I shouldn't ever have done it. But you learn that as you grow up, you know. I don't want him, he could learn that without doing it because I can kill him. Yeah, um, but he's he's good because I'm open and honest and I explain the reasons behind why I'm doing, you know, why I might trap a dozen crayfish today and squash them all on the bank. What's the benefit of that, you know? Yeah. Um, same with the cormant, same with anything, really. Yeah. Right right through to anything we do on the estate. You know, why are we taking the deer out? I fully explain it to him. So if people at school do you hope they wouldn't in a rural environment like this, but they this people move in move into areas that don't understand. But he is pretty well equipped with the knowledge he needs to bite our corner, you know, because it is easy to get that kind of um a finger pointed at you for just being barracking. You're killing things for the sake of killing things. That's never the case, it's definitely not the case for me. If I'm pulling the trigger on anything, then we're making the full use of that beast after us on the grass or whatever it might be. If I take a fish from the river, you know, it's it's never wasted. Yeah, it's important that he sees that because it can't be indiscriminate or without reason. It has to be a purpose behind it. So yeah, yeah. And I'm passionate about that. Um you know what I've spoken to you today about the feel to fork kind of thing. I I love the fact that we are now um we're not you know fully um self-sufficient. We we're not living off the land, you know, we're not cavemen, but the freezer is full of things that we've harvested, which is great. You know, I love that that we don't have to pop to the shops anymore when we want to put a steak in the pan, we go to the freezer and there's meat in the freezer that we've been out and hunted our side from the estate, and yeah, that that animal lived its life free, did exactly what it wanted to do.

SPEAKER_01 46:48

Yeah, it's almost like we've we're frowning upon the species that we used to be, and it's like, well, that's we're probably the unhealthiest of the of our time as a humans is now in uh in sort of frowning upon the way we used to do things and hunt things and the way nature does hunt things.

SPEAKER_00 47:05

Yeah, every animal that lives, every creature on the planet survives off another, you know. Yeah, um we're not going out there and popping off things willy-nilly, but in in the management plan that we've got for the estate and that all farms and all agriculture has and forestry and all the rest of it, crops need protection, so we're just protecting the crops, but we're making use of the pest. Yeah, yeah. It's not getting bulldozed into the ground and being wasted, and that's important to me, it always has been.

SPEAKER_01 47:30

So with the river keep and roll, do you find any issues with poaching and yeah, we do have a bit of that because we've got pretty easy access at the top and the bottom.

SPEAKER_00 47:39

There's no public access in terms of footpaths along the river, but we've got river crossings above um above Fairford and one below here where we do, yeah. We see them it's it's may it's in in the summer when the weather's nice and long evenings. You do you get travellers come along and try, you know, their arm off the bridge and bits and pieces. But um, it's not like it's not uh it's not prolific, it's not all the time, but it's just occasionally you do have like I told you earlier, I I had a pretty good scrape back in I hadn't been here more than a couple of months, and um the phone rang one evening, and um, oh, there's poachers at the top end, so off I went in the truck, and quite naively, I stopped the truck on the bridge, had a good look. Yeah, there's six lads up the river. So um, what I should have done at that point was continue to drive and not turned around. But being an idiot, I uh I took the truck off the bridge, turned around, and thought I'll have another look. And before I got back to the bridge, they pulled their vehicles out and blocked me in. Um, uh, at which point they surrendered the truck, and it was a case of calm down, keep you, you know, keep you cool and try and talk your way out of it because um they wanted my phone and they wanted everything. Um I got pictures and whatnot, so they they took my phone and it got really threatening. It was one of those shit, here we go kind of moments. I'm about to get filled in. Um, but I managed to talk my way out of it and got the I I I mean, I don't know why they needed the pictures because as it turned out, they were it was false plates on the vehicles anyway. I remembered the members, and when I spoke to our Royal Crimes Officer, they did a search on one anyway. They they know had false plates on it. Yeah, but it was a bit of a sketchy moment, and uh yeah, um I haven't had anything like that since, but it's not uncommon for keepers to have to to deal with issues like that.

SPEAKER_01 49:25

Yeah, it's a case of now how much danger do you want to put yourself in for the trick for the sake of what yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 49:30

And then I my missus went mental. I didn't tell her for a couple of days, but um I obviously went through um I had to tell everybody at work what happened and um look out, yeah. Bosses of the estate wanted to know what happened and whatnot. And and then obviously I told Beck and she wasn't best pleased, but she's got a great point. Like we live on the estate, my truck's parked outside the house, so it wouldn't take them very long to find out where we are and where I live, and then I'm putting the family at risk. So I don't do it anymore. I don't I've stayed flat out to them at work for the sake of a couple of traits. I'm not I'm never I'm not approaching them in that way anymore. So we've put tech in the vehicles now we can film from a distance that you know that I I've got kit that I don't need to get as close as that anymore.

SPEAKER_01 50:09

So they supportive the the Yeah, very, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 50:12

Yeah, yeah. Our our rural crimes officer here, but fantastic. Always on the end of a phone, stops by now and again, you know, pulls in really, really good. Yeah, I do, I do feel like they are in your corner. Um yeah, I can't say that's the same everywhere in the country, but here, fantastic. And we get a lot of trouble with hair course and on the estate as well. So we do have quite a lot, quite a strong connection with the um with our rural crimes here.

SPEAKER_01 50:33

Right. Yeah, okay. So we're going, you've this is your first year on the estate as the river keeper. What does the winter hold for someone in your position?

SPEAKER_00 50:42

No grass cutting, which is good. I've broke both the mowers last week, so trying to get the place tidy for you. Um yeah, it it will literally be a case. I've got some plans in place for the winter now to to harvest some timber from um we got lots of woodland. Right. So I want to do now is spend the winter making steaks and making fires and sort of getting myself ready. Sorry, put steaks and food. Yeah, steaks. There'd be a bit of that going on as well. But it'll be um there's lots of tree work they need to do in. We had a lot of trees pollarded on the river, a lot of willows and uh and some ash as well. Um, they all need knocking back again there, they both sprinted too so there's lots of tree work to do. Um, again, lots of uh making equipment and parts, bits and bobs that I'll need for um when we get through into the spring going forward next year for projects I want to do. So um there'll be a fair bit of time spent with the other guys on the on the estate as well.

SPEAKER_01 51:35

Walking round earlier, though, that when you've got a lot of your work that you're showing me you've done this year with changing the direction and changing the flows, what is the motive behind that? What's the objective of what you're trying to do when you're creating those sparrows?

SPEAKER_00 51:47

It's kind of to re-re-wiggle the river, really, in a way. Um, so quite a lot of what the lower end of what I showed you today, that had all been sort of straightened and canalized and managed by man for various purposes. Right. Some sporting, some for the the mills where we've you know channeled water into the water mills to turn the wheels. Um, but that is all quite linear, quite uniform, quite boring, not a lot of variation in habitat. So by putting in structure, whether that be kneeling trees in or whether that be pinning large woody debris in, you know, tree trunks, that kind of thing, by creating variation in the flow, changing the flow dynamics, you can create depth on one side, shallower water behind fast water and slower water. You can clean the gravels, you can use the the power of the water to scour the gravel, to clean the silt out, to improve spawning, um spawning um substrates. So it uh and also a lot of like where the faggots had been used down the river, so the faggots, for those that don't know, large um two-meter-long bundles of typically hazel um bound together, and then we pin those in against the riverbank to act as like a buffer between the flow and the bank. So if you've got an area that's being uh eroded away uh on the outside of a bend, typically, you might put a line of faggots around the outside of that bend to stop that scouring effect to reduce the amount of siltation that happens in the river and protect that bank. Right. Um, so there's lots of different techniques we can use to do that. Um, you know, we can do it with stone, we can do it with we we're just lucky here that we've got the forestry that I can go out into the woods, I can earmark a few trees and we can take them down and I can put those directly into the river. And yeah, the great thing is with some of the willows I showed you earlier that I've knelt in, those are living. So that this time next year will be a big green, lovely willow tree. Right. And it'll be protecting the bank or it'll be creating a fish refuge.

SPEAKER_01 53:35

Yeah. Does it not push the problem further downstream for you to then go keep down?

SPEAKER_00 53:40

Yeah, it will. It does. Yeah, yeah. So if I'm cleaning silt out up here, it's gonna move on downstream and settle somewhere.

SPEAKER_01 53:46

What about the weed, controlling weed and managing all that?

SPEAKER_00 53:50

To be honest with you, we I don't have enough weed for it to be a problem. Right. Where we've got the the big wide broadwater piece that we walked up, that acts like an 800 meter long silt trap. Yeah. So basically the water comes racing in at the top of there over the cascades, and over the course of the next 800 metres, all the stuff all the solids suspended, drop out, and then by the time that leaves the broadwater, that is really, really good quality water at the bottom of there, as long as it's been filtered. And then the next how long would that be? Three or four hundred meters of river below that is some of the best we've got in terms of weed growth. Yeah. Um, because what I think happens is we have like we've had a couple of fairly wet winters, and we've had a few summers where we've had some pretty high water levels as well. So the renunculus gets scoured out, and then it takes a long time to regenerate. Um, and if you add in on top of that, uh any issue with siltation, so that's going to then cover the plant, dust the plant almost, reduce um the amount of sunlight that's getting through photosynthesis, the plant can't survive or it doesn't do as well, grows far slower. So, where we've had that over the last few years, and I've seen pictures of this in the past where it was, you know, very vibrant, green, lovely weed growth. We haven't currently got that. It's the same on other rivers that the Y is another one that suffered the same thing. Um, I think the weed is just becoming uh it's just struggling to recolonize areas where it once was. Right. So um I don't have that problem currently. I I did I did do a weed cut towards the end of the summer, but this year really it was about leaving the weed to maintain the water levels. Yeah. So uh I did notice on the gauge that after I'd done some weed, I I only moved I only removed enough just to allow a few channels for our rods to be able to fish more effectively. But even just removing a few um enough weed to create a few channels, the uh EA gauge that we've got on the river here dropped by like 20 mil or something like that. But that was just through the volume lost of the the weed taken out of the river.

SPEAKER_01 55:46

Right, okay. So what you don't do you have as much issue with flood up here through the winter?

SPEAKER_00 55:51

Uh it's not like a really flashy river. It's not like your typical Spate River where it will shoot up and you know spill out everywhere. It's it's more slow to react a bit like your chalk streams. We've got we're on limestone here, and the aquifers fill slowly and you know, um the river comes up more slowly. So no, it spills out into the fields, but in terms of like big dramatic floods, not really a problem, no. And I've obviously with the hatches up and down the river, I can kind of hold water back to protect the town and then redirect it around and spill it out onto the the old flood meadows and things. So there's a lot again, that'll be another um another big part of the job going forward would be as we get through more and more and more seasons, you'll get more and more and more experience. See, I'm not into this saying, Oh, I've done all this before because there's nothing, there's no training you could ever do to to to every site's different, every river's different, every situation's different. You know, you you know, anyone could be shown A to open and close a hatch, but yeah, how that river's gonna react and where it's gonna go and what effect that's gonna have, that can only be learned through time.

SPEAKER_01 56:55

Yeah, we were chatting earlier about obviously our mates that went to college with Sam. Uh and is it Toby, isn't it, that both um managed some stretches of the river. Do you hit speak to them? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 57:04

Me and Sam are real close, yeah. And Toby's just downstream of Sam.

SPEAKER_01 57:07

So it did make me wonder if it is gonna be just a dye and art that that who is coming into river keeping because we're in a commercial world, and if it's not a commercially driven kind of job, then yeah, who is these skills are all well and good to pass on down, but if they're not of actual any tangible value to uh to the commercial world, is is it gonna be something that's gonna be are our rivers become become a little bit more of a mess? Are we gonna need more government backing to invest into something that to keep the rivers in the standard that you keep them at?

SPEAKER_00 57:38

Is uh yeah, it it it might be uh I'm lucky with um with my employer here because it's not a commercial venture for them. So I don't I I haven't got that pressure to deliver anything particularly. And then when you look at the areas where the other boys are, uh and further south than that, if you take like the test in the itch and in the Hampshire Aven, those kind of that's like hollow ground, isn't it, within fishery management. There is so much business done on the banks of that river. Yeah, and I'm I don't I mean people have business meetings, deals are done, multi-million pound deals are done off the back of a day's fish and that kind of thing. Yeah, those those kinds of places I don't think they're ever going to struggle. There's always going to be somebody to fill the boots of that syndicate member who leaves. You know, when you're paying a thousand pounds a yard to fish there, you're kind of I think that will be fine. But you know, uh a river like I've got here, if it wasn't run by the people, it is run if it wasn't owned by the people who own it, you know, being a charitable trust, I think yeah, this would be very difficult to maintain solely if it had to pay for itself. Right. Because I it like I say that the fishing on the river doesn't even cover my wage. So and they're not worried about that. The charity aren't worried about that. That's not their motivation.

SPEAKER_01 58:47

Do you do you find anybody getting in your way, like organizations like perhaps Natural England or the EA, do they look at some of your management practices and say, tell you how to don't not to do it, or you oh no, you shouldn't be doing that. This is what you want me you to do.

SPEAKER_00 59:00

You yeah, I mean there's permits for everything, and if you look on the Environment Agency website, you can you can sort of you've got a project in mind, and if you want to, you can go on there and like it outlines what you can and can't do, like how how long can your flow deflectors be? What angle should they be at? How many metres of spiling could you do, or how many meters of faggoting could you do? You know, there are parameters out there, but having had them on site recently, um they're they're happier when they're on board. Yeah, get them in early. We walked the entire river, I told them what I wanted to do, I asked them for advice on fish passes and all that kind of stuff that I'm looking at doing. And once they're on site and in the conversation, everything becomes a lot easier.

SPEAKER_01 59:41

Yeah, a lot easier.

SPEAKER_00 59:42

And natural England, I the only dealings I've really had with Natural England was for the Cormant licence, which is you know, although that was a bit of an old school convoluted form to fill out that's simple enough.

SPEAKER_01 59:52

Yeah, right. Because the um the angling trust, I know that do you have much dealing with them? Because I found them quite helpful.

SPEAKER_00 59:59

Yeah, they're fantastic. So I'm a member and I have been since day one. And just uh this month, I've been on and on and on at the trust, uh, that and the trust that I work for here to to join as a as a syndicate. So we have now joined, so the fishery is now a member as well.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:13

Yeah, that fish legal side of it. They're both important.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:16

Yeah, you've had a 10 million pound public liability insurance. Yeah, I can't speak highly enough of the trust. I've used them on other campaigns. Uh we we had a big issue with a lake down in the in the forest where I'm from, and that was looking like we were going to lose that. Right. Um, and we got I got onto the trust really early on, and they drove the campaign for us and helped us to to save the ponds and stuff. So but they're great. I can't speak highly enough of the trust. I wish everybody if they had a voice as loud as I look at Basque or the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust, those kind of um organizations within shooting, they've got a really loud voice, you know. Yeah, we haven't got that as Angland, we're too fragmented. Everybody that picks up a fishing rod should be a member of the Angland Trust.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:55

You do feel quite vulnerable now that the water and the river pollution issues that are put into the limelight a lot more. You do feel I'd imagine from someone like your role would would feel quite responsible for keeping water that downstream it's like I said to you earlier, I can I can do everything to the best of my abilities here on my mid.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:15

But if the guy upstream is negligent in anything he does, or if Tim's water have a issue further upstream, I can do well all I can here, but it will be wiped out in a heartbeat if it comes through that river. I can to coin a phrase, I can only piss with the cock I got.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:30

Well, Mark, I think that's uh a nice conclusion to the podcast. Thank you. Um yeah, thank you so much for showing me around this day. The work that you've done and the passion you've got for it. Oh, this is your pursuit or something, isn't it? Oh, that's buggered that, and I you said you're expecting that. But no, um, Mark's expecting a chair. Yeah, you've got no chair being delivered, so better round that. But thanks for showing me around and uh you fulfilled the dream that you had at college and stood up that day, and uh well done to you, and well done on all you've achieved with the river keeping here as well. Uh go and get your chair.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:59

Yeah, thank you, Bench.