Over the past years we have had terrible problems with oxygen crashes through the autumn months. This has steadily worsened over the last 4 or 5 years to several of our lakes. We have sought expert and professional advice from several different sources,and together with our own conclusions, it appears to be that the main cause of the problem is the copious amounts of the wrong type bait going in our waters. Particles baits in particular are the main culprit.
To be on the conservative side let’s put it in perspective, 10x anglers in 1 day at layer putting in 10k per person =100k that’s 1400k of particles in just 2 weeks multiply that over the corse of the summer and it starts getting insane. And that’s being very conservative.
Layer is just 1 example.
You could argue that the fish stocks are high and all the feed gets eaten ,but I bet most people reading this have watched someone spodding all day without catching a fish. You could also argue that the oxygen crashes are due to leaves rotting on the bottom but this is minimal and the problems have been before or during the leaves falling.
We now have had a spodding ban on Inworth 1 since the beginning of last summer to try and reduce the amount of bait going in. This seems to have worked as the fish are now putting on weight and are getting caught more often.
As we don’t want to ban spodding everywhere and the club has invested an awful lot of time, in particular, an awful lot money on fish stocks over the the last few years, the committee has come to the decision to have a complete particle ban (Sweetcorn will be allowed) on the worst effected waters. This will be for a period of time from April 1st through to September 30th. The Waters with the ban will be , LAYER PIT AND BOTH BOVINGTON 1&2 .This is just an experiment to start with and if successful will possibly bought in on other waters.
Fish welfare isn’t just about how you treat the fish once it is on the bank, but also about taking care of its environment. Hopefully by anglers substituting hemp and other seeds, for pellets, crushed boilies, corn and other more easily digested foods, the water quality will increase ,the fish weights will increase and the general fishing will get better.
Unfortunately we are slowly killing our lakes and the fish within them by the huge amounts of bait going in and this way, hopefully we can all enjoy great fishing in a nice environment.

Layer Pit and Bovington 1 & 2 Particle Ban