Blog

The Great Flood!!

Posted: 9th Feb 2013

Well what a weeks it's been from the last update. I finished off with the draining of the Back-bay and harvesting the fish just before dark. I put all the silver fish into a holding pen ready for delivery the following day, I called it a night & with no less than 30 minutes before dark, the weather took a turn for the worse and I thank my lucky stars for getting the job done in the nick of time.On awaking the following morning it was bucketing it down and it looked to have been all night, checking the rain gauge outside before breakfast my eyes popped out with over 70mm of rain falling over the night which is quite freakish weather considering more rain fell that night than the whole 12 months of 2011!!!! Unreal.

I made my way down to the lake to be confronted with the whole valley flooded and within 12" of coming over the dam around the 7 acre lake "Shit" I was down to the chateaux lake like "Mr Bolt" and it was coming over the top of the grill by a good 8", checking all was clear and free flowing it was back to the lakes to check all was Ok.

The big lake was raging over the monk and when I got to the spit which is the dam splitting the big lake in two it was coming back over the top and had nearly washed the corner of the spit away, this was a frightening situation because if the spit had breached all the fish from the main bowl of the lake could have gone back into the drained back-bay which was now 1/2 full again and then with the drainage canal through the Dam I could have lost fish. I got the 14 ton digger round there sharpish and put a  few ton of earth in the corner for strength, then I dropped a 4" pipe through the canal channel and back filled quickly which allowed the back-bay to continue to drain but nothing could excape if a problem arised.

It was a few days of keeping my eye on everything and we are back to a normal state thank god. I have continued with the machine shaping areas I had been working on, raised the banks around the stock ponds to give me another 12" of water in the summer and hopefully we can get on with the job when the sun is burning my back and the birds are singing!!!! Bring it on.

On the wildlife front the raptors are spiralling the skies ready for nesting soon, and I think but cannot confirm 100% that I have seen the Goshawk twice. Once it came shooting down the path in front of me, then swooping into the pine trees, but it was so fast it could have been a female Spar. The second sighting was it flying straight over the lakes like a fighter jet and disappearing into the Oak forest overlooking the lakes, but same again it was just too fast to confirm.

The fish are very inactive with the cold weather, and I have not seen a fish show itself for a few weeks now. I found a moorhen in the margin this morning that looked like she was crouching down and hiding as I passed, but on close inspection she had passed away in the night, I think due to the bitter weather.

That's all for now and it's time to get some wood for the fire and hope for some settled weather.

The picture I have included is the valley at the back of the lakes when it flooded looking more like another lake!!!!

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