The Crayfish fight back!.

A  nice uneventful day for us, which makes a nice change. We did have a wander around the Cassiobury Nature reserve this morning. Shame it was so misty and murky after all the rain yesterday and parts of the footpaths round the reserve were impassable. Still I enjoyed myself with my camera but as I kept lagging behind taking pictures Ian gave up on me and left me to it.

Cassiobury moorings

 So we didn't actually get going until after 10.30am and, apart from a very brief stop at The World of Water for my bait, we traveled for about 2 hours before calling it a day at Abbots Langley.

Lady Capel's lock

  I went fishing hoping for a record breaking fish ( I still live in hope ) and kept landing those American Signal Crayfish! They are a real menace and introduced into Europe in the 1960's to supplement the  Scandinavian  fisheries, which were being damaged by crayfish plaque, but the imports turned out to be a carrier of that disease. The signal crayfish is now an invasive species ousting native species across Europe and Japan. Not only do they burrow into the mud eroding the banks, but have greatly reduced our native white clawed crayfish which compete for habitat and food. The first couple of crayfish I caught managed to free themselves from my hook and swam back to the murky depths. Somehow the next one I manged to foul hook (  hooked in part of the body other then the mouth ) and had a real job freeing it. The hook was caught in it's abdomen and even though I tried to grab it at the back of its head, the claws kept lunging at me and I went all girlie and refused to grab it. Ian came to the rescue with thick gloves and a small pair of pliers and after I managed to flip it over onto it's back and held it down with a long pair of forceps ( used for pike fishing ) I finally unhooked the beast. Then I had the dilemma of what to do with it. By rights it should be humanly killed, but with nothing at hand to do this, I released it back into the canal. After that I gave up trying to catch my monster fish and went foraging with Ian for the boaters gold seen covered with branches along the hedge.

 

First wood collected ready for autumn.

And finally:-