Friday 27 July 2018

Ballyarton Weir



Ballyarton Weir came into my head one day last week.  It will be a year, next month, since the weir got destroyed during the worst flooding the North West had ever seen.

I have very fond memories of the weir.  I remember my dad taking me to see if there were any fish running when I was young.  I'm old enough to remember the steps and all the attampts made to make the weir more accessible for migrating salmon and trout but none of them really working any better than what was there before. I remember fishing in the 'flats' above the weir.  I remember trying to get photos of the fish trying to get over the weir on the camera.  Great memories.  Hours spent there that seemed to pass in the blink of an eye.

I've tried to do a bit of research on the weir and the mills it served and uncovered a lot of information.  Including, Murder most fowl! I'll get some of it together and put it on a later blog post.

As I've said, I really loved this area but have not fished it in a good few years.  I already said that I'd lost the bug for fishing a bit and I didn't give this area the attention it deserved.  Now it is gone.  Is that a bad thing though?

When I was in my late teens and early 20s, almost every Sunday morning in the later part of the season, I got dropped off at McCandless's Bridge,  the wee narrow bridge on the Cumber Road and I fished the river, with spinner, all the way home.  A good 6 or 7 miles at a guess.

The whole area had changed long before last year's flood though.  I remember fishing it years ago and there were small rocky pools about half way down from the bridge.  These held fish.  Then at the bottom of the field on the right bank of the river, there was a huge bend with the river almost a horse shoe shape with a big deep pool right on the bend.  A few years ago, some organisation installed groynes of large boulders to help speed up some of the streams and pools.  Really all that was achieved was that the streams and pools silted up.  That, once extremely deep, pool had got really shallow the last time I fished it.  I seriously doubt if it held fish.  Maybe it did.  The outflow of this pool was the last piece of running, streamy, water before the 'flats'.

It was a great throw in good water.  Even if the water was dirty down with me, it always cleaned earlier up at Claudy and neck of Crossan's was always worth a throw.  Everyone knew this however.  I remember going to fish it one day and when I arrived at McCandless's bridge there was 24 cars parked up.  Needless to say I didn't get out of the car and came home again.

The fish laid up in the dam in low water and when they got the chance to run, they would move up through the stream.  If you could get there as fresh water was hitting, the sport could be fantastic.

The flats themselves could be quite dour.  It was flat, canal like, water and it could be very difficult to get a fish to rise to anything.  Most people who fished the flats did so with worms.  It was also a popular place for night time sea trout fly fishing.

That was back in the days when I believed that you couldn't fish fly in low water for salmon, let alone still water.  Now that I have learned tactics and techniques for low water, it will be a great regret of mine that I never tried them on the flats.  I had always intended to.  But, I put it off and put it off and now there are no flats.

The 'Flats' frozen in January 2010
As I said in the opening of this post, I am old enough to remember the old 'Carry Steps'.  They were literally that.  Concrete steps built in triangles and pointing downstream.  I remember them being there but I don't actually remember seeing a fish on them but apparantly fish could be easily 'gaffed' off the steps by poachers.

No matter how much of a barrier to migration the weir was, fish have always seemed to get over or past it someway with salmon and trout always caught above the weir during the season.  I saw this in Olly McGilloway's book, "Along the Faughan side",  "The layde, which starts fifty yards upstream of the weir, has a 'cut' into the river immediately below the weir.  The 'cut' acts as a pass to allow fish up into the dam at times of low water".  I never knew such a 'cut' existed.  I really do not remember that.  But, it must have worked to some extent. It was probably also abused by poachers.

In later years, there were tanks installed and were supposed to let the fish swim up into, rest for a while, before swimming or jumping up into the next tank and eventually over the weir.  This didn't turn out to be all that successful either with the force of water coming out of the tank openings being extremely strong the fish had difficulty getting through them in floods.

The last attempt to leave the weir more fish friendly involved putting in large boulders to force the fish through a narrow channel and up into holding areas where they could rest up before trying the tanks or even jumping over the weir.  Again, it didn't quite work as planned.  In flood, the fish found it difficult to get through the narrow channel with the force of the water.  When the flood started to go down, there was only a relatively narrow window in the height of the flood that the fish could jump over the weir.  There could be a foot of water left on a flood and the fish could not jump the weir, although they tried and tried and tried again.  The main problem though was that the boulders and concrete slabs that had been installed took a serious battering in floods with trees and other debris knocking them all over the place.  This then left it difficult for fish to get up through.  It was also an awful eyesore in my opinion.

The remains of some of the works to make the weir more migrateable in January 2010

I sat at the weir in October 2010 after the fishing season had finished.  I sat a good couple of hours and you could almost touch the fish I was so close to them.  This was my first time trying to photograph salmon at the weir.

Two salmon trying to get over the Weir in October 2010
I was still getting used to the camera and ended up with more photos of water than fish.  When I arrived there were plenty of fish showing at the weir.  My first thought was, "there is some run of fish in the river".  After I'd sat for those few hours watching fish jumping and jumping and jumping, it dawned on me.  Those fish couldn't get over the weir.  The water wasn't high enough.  Yet in their desperation to reach the spawning grounds, they were relentlessly jumping and falling back.  Jumping and falling back.  It was actually extremely sad.  It sickened me a bit.

For different reasons, I hadn't got fishing since September in 2010.  After watching those fish knocking their brains out trying to get over Ballyarton, I haven't cast a line after September since.  It just didn't sit right with me.  For a long time I had felt that I didn't really like catching coloured fish.  Some say that fish begin to colour as they reach spawning condition and lose their fats and nutrients as they spend time in the river without eating.  When I thought about those coloured fish and the nutrients they had already lost, the energy wasted on the end of my line, and maybe, still have to waste more energy trying to get over that weir, it just finished me with fishing for coloured fish.

I missed getting to the weir in 2011 but I got back in 2012.  This time there was much more water in the river.

More water in the river in early November 2012
Even in this height of water.  There were more fish falling back than were getting over.  It just still seemed an awful waste of limited energy resources.

Proof that fish did get over the weir eventually
This was the last time I took photos at the weir.  Again, I had intended to get back again as my knowledge of the camera improved, I was hoping my photos of the fish would too.  Again, I never got the chance.

22nd August 2017.  It started off not a bad day but there was a chance of thunder mentioned on the weather forecast.  The rain came on around 2pm and got heavier and heavier and heavier.  The type of rain we got occasionally as a shower.  A real downpour that soaked the place and then went away again.  Except this time, it didn't go away.  Not for about 8 hours.  The amount of rain that fell was unprecidented.  With the amount of rain that fell, it wasn't long until gutters couldn't take the volume of water, gullys couldn't take it and eventually the rivers and burns couldn't take it either.  Homes and businesses were completely destroyed within a few hours.  One of the main routes out of Claudy Village,  a bridge that had stood for around 100 years was gone as well as part of the Three Mile Bridge at Drumahoe.

I was getting messages and pictures the next morning from various friends and then I got the message, "The weir's gone!"

The flood came on a Tuesday night into Wednesday morning but it wasn't until the following Monday evening that I got to the weir.  I couldn't believe my eyes.

This is how I remembered it.  Taken in January 2010:


This was taken from the same spot in August 2017

The whole left side of the weir was completely gone!

So, we have no more weir and no more flats.  Is this really a bad thing?  From a nostalgic viewpoint, I'm gutted that the weir is gone.  We are losing our heritage at an alarming rate.  Old mills and houses are disappearing and the only idea that there was once something there is from looking at old maps.  This was a major landmark on the Faughan and a relic of our rural industrial past.  On the other hand, it was a major barrier to fish migration.  No more will they have to waste energy trying to scale the weir but can instead put that energy to better use cutting redds.  Perhaps the weir away could mean more fish surviving to spawn to return to sea as Kelts and maybe return again as larger multi-wintered and multi-spawning fish?

Where 'The Flats' once were.  The river used to be the height of the grass on the right of the picture.
The flats gone will be a great loss to many anglers.  On the road nearest the weir, you could almost guarantee that there'd be cars parked up at the gate any time you passed during the fishing season.  Sometimes the same cars. Some people will have lost their favourite fishing spots.  On the other side, the calm deep water made this area a favourite of poachers with nets.  How successful they were, I really do not know but I'm sure they got quite a few.  Perhaps a few more of these fish will be saved and go on to spawn?

The view from the top of the old weir downstream with the silted up 'tanks' in the foreground

The view upstream where the 'Flats' once were. The water used to cover the clay on the bank on the left of this photo.
 I was really looking forward to this fishing season to see how soon the fish started arriving at Claudy and the Upper reaches of the river.  Unfortunately we are in the middle of the longest dry spell that I ever remember.  Fish and trout are struggling to get over 'Bessie's Dam' in Drumahoe since last year's  flood. Rain and water is needed badly.

While reading 'Along the Faughan Side' and the section about the weir, I saw this. "The weir was erected by the Irwin family in the latter half of the 1850's and, according to Alan McCombe of Ballyarton, "It is said that prayer allowed the weir to be built without problems of any kind during the driest summer people could remember".  I found it quite ironic that the weir was built in the driest summer that "...people could remember...".  The first summer it has seen since it was breached is most certianly the driest summer that many people today can remember.

I am really sad that we've lost a massive part of our local heritage and history.  A landmark that holds so many great memories for me.  As a barrier to fish migration however, it is probably one of the best things ever to happen to the river.  It is very much, mixed emotions for me.

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