Water Shortage

[Nige]

According to the water companies, this year is set to be yet another of our driest, and with people living in the South-East already under hose-pipe bans, I wonder how much this will affect the water levels and in turn, the fish and their behaviour as water levels fall?

Your thoughts?

[Stig]

Well its all dependent on how warm/hot the weather is this summer as its a well known fact that warm/hot water holds a LOT less oxygen then cool/cold water fish are amazingly more hardy then we give them credit to be and can survive quite extreme conditions of cold ,and drought. With regard to them feeding during extreme conditions i believe that they put thmselves in some sort of suspended animation and lie dormant using as little oxygen as possible and not moving about searching for food therfore even though the fish would become more concentrated in the reduced water levels the lower it gets the less they would feed.
In any case its a problem for those who live in the South east as a some of there water is extracted from rivers and the more they extract the lower the rivers get which will have a knock on effect on the water table which may effect lakes etc its just a vicious circle and an over-populated south east of englands problem unless we have an extreme summer akin to 1976 0r 1995 it should have very little or no effect on us or our waters up here in the North west and North Midlands so Nige dont worry about it just be

[Sam]

well after today and we'll be alright for a few weeks .