The Mole Story

Today I arranged to meet Lewis, an angler from the Horley Piscatorial Society, who had kindly agreed to talk to me about angling on the Mole. Lewis manages his club’s licensed stretches of the River Mole which include Kinnersley Manor, Gatwick Stream and Riverside in Horley as well as Earlswood Lakes near Reigate. We met early morning and he showed me a beautiful stretch of the Mole around Kinnersley Manor south of Reigate as we walked and talked.

We started at the Kinnersley Manor gauging station which is just over the bridge to the Manor. The bridge is characterful, has lost part of the side railings and is labelled “weak”. It sits low to the water and had obviously reemerged after recent flooding on November 16-17. The road and bridge here are flooded when river levels approach 3m and there was plenty of evidence of flood debris trapped in fencing and surface water lingering in marshy ground surrounding the station. The river was at bankfull stage but falling.

Data from this gauging station is available back to the 1970’s. The building is currently surrounded by scaffolding and seems to have seen better days. It was taken off recording peak flow on the National Rivers Authority flow archive https://nrfa.ceh.ac.uk/data/station/info/39069 apparently due to inaccuracies when levels exceed 3m. In the recent high flow conditions the gauge may have had some trouble recording peak flow as data was interrupted, but so did Gatwick and Horley so it may have been a wider issue.

From the gauging station we crossed several fields and walked along the riverside. As an experienced angler, Lewis has an immense knowledge of the river and fish but his club’s activities extend beyond this to something more akin to an active stewardship of the river environment.

As well as working closely with landowners and farmers to maintain access and upkeep of styles and fencing, Lewis and his club members also work at times with Surrey County Council, the Environment Agency, the charity SERT (South East Rivers Trust) as well as the volunteer group Gatwick Greenspace. They conduct conservation such as new planting in lakes and riverside litter picking as well as rebuilding styles and fishing platforms. I also learned that the club had visited Gatwick on one of Ian Waghorn’s excellent tours of the water quality engineering.

If Horley Piscatorial Society is anything to go by then anglers are real champions of the River Mole and care enormously about the status of the river. This was shown after the dreadful 2017 pollution incident which killed thousands of fish in the Gatwick Stream. Many anglers were understandably devastated to see fish desperately jumping out of the water onto banks as the water was so oxygen starved from the illegal pollution.

Here is a gellery of the

The tragedy of this event was the overnight loss of whole cohorts of adult fish populations from the River Mole and Gatwick Stream. Some individual fish were over 50 years old. I had no idea fish could live that long and even into their 60’s in some cases. This incident cost the Mole a whole generation of fish, though some species were impacted more than others. However, Horley anglers responded rapidly and were pivotal in organising restocking of the Mole through working with the Environment Agency. It is a relief to hear the fish stock is gradually improving through their work and readiness to act, not only out of interest in their own sport, but for the wider good of the river.

It was a fascinating and inspiring walk with Lewis and I learnt a huge amount (to my shame starting from pretty much zero knowledge of fishing!). Anglers in active and well run angling societies such as Horley Piscatorial Society are a vital foundation for river health. It seems to me that they connect up a network of other stakeholders from farmers to councils, the EA and other charities and conservation groups.

My sincere thanks to Lewis from the Horley Piscatorial Society.