Nature Watch, with Ron Freethy

A COUPLE of weeks ago I went fishing - with a difference.

I was invited to join the Environment Agency Team, local countryside rangers and local anglers on a netting exercise around Pennington Flash, near Leigh.

The Flash is a 70 hectare lake formed by mining subsidence and is the centrepiece of a 200 hectare country park.

This is managed by Wigan Metropolitan Council's leisure services department through its countryside ranger service and provides for a wide range of activities, including wildlife watching and fishing.

I spoke to Peter Alker, the warden, who told me that the sighting records for late August and early September were spectacular and included black-necked grebe, wood sandpiper, spotted crake, gargancy and ruff, among others.

There is a visitors' centre on site where there is plenty of pay and display parking.

Peter can be contacted on 01942 605253.

Although the birds are always interesting, the reason for my visit was to watch the netting of fish from two of the smaller flashes to be moved into the main lake area.

The Environment Agency certainly knows how to do this and soon the team's boat was spreading out a net so huge that it covered the whole of the area, supported by corks. The area was around four feet deep and soon more than 20 people were wading into the water and pulling the net.

Gradually the net accumulated a heaving mass of fish, including large specimens of bream, roach, perch, rudd and a number of very vicious-looking pike.

I think that sometimes the Environment Agency is viewed as a pollution watchdog - a sort of police force on the lookout for polluters.

This is only a small part of its business.

The agency carries out very detailed scientific surveys and is just as concerned in the monitoring of healthy populations as it is in dealing with problems.

The relationship between anglers and agency staff was full of fun and banter.

I've been fishing many times but I have never seen anything quite as spectacular as the catch I witnessed at Pennington Flash.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.