WITH strong winds, rain, sleet and snow over last weekend, the coarse fishing season ended for most anglers on a rather poor note with only one angler in action on the upper reaches of the River Aire.

Sport was mainly with brown trout and even though the river was running rather high, one or two good fish were landed to over the 900g mark on the lobworm fished close in to the bank or in a back wash.

During the last few weeks, grayling and chub have been difficult to find and pike have not been plentiful even though conditions did improve for them during the two week warm spell.

The final day of the season is today although with the forecast for more gales and heavy rain, it will be very unlikely that much fishing will be undertaken until the brown trout season opens on March 25th.

Embsay Reservoir is also closed for fishing at the moment and will re-open on the same day as the river.

Whinnygill Reservoir and the canal are open for coarse fishing but Skipton Angling Association members must have renewed their subscriptions before commencing any fishing on either water and also at Embsay and the River Aire from March 25th.

I was reading a cutting from an April 1896 copy of the Craven Herald which covered the local angling report.

The newly opened trout season had got off to a poor start due mainly to a prolonged dry spell since the start of the year which had produced very low water levels.

On a more serious note was the killing of fish in Eller Beck (described as one of the best becks in Yorkshire for trout fishing) by the introduction of calcium chloride.

The article said that it was hoped that the perpetrator would be soon apprehended unlike in a similar case on Silsden Beck some years before when that perpetrator only became known when he made a death bed confession of his crime.