Kick Testing a River - Checking Ecosystem Health

Hello again, welcome back. This video is going to be pretty much entirely different to any other ones that I've done in the past. It's going to be put together more like a biology lesson, but hopefully you'll see why as it progresses. I've got my local river behind me here, and I'm going to be looking for specific invertebrates that live in the water. Those are stonefly larvae, mayfly larvae, caddisfly larvae, freshwater shrimp, freshwater louse. Sludge worm and rat-tailed maggot, which is pretty much as disgusting as it sounds. I'll try and find some contaminated parts of the river, you know, where the river's slowed down. That's the best place to catch them, where there's really low oxygen. Now, the reason I'm looking for those specific organisms is because I want to get an idea of how healthy the water is, how productive it is. Now, if we do happen to find rat-tailed maggots in here, And possibly we will. It doesn't mean to say that the water is unhealthy if we find other things. But if we only find, say, rat-tailed maggots and water lice, you know, the oxygen content is really poor. And the water, therefore, probably isn't very good. Now, I will put the names of those particular creatures I'm looking for in the video description. So please check that out. There'll be Wikipedia links there as well, which will explain exactly what they are. I'm going to put them in the order of river health. So if you're finding creatures more towards the top of the list, it's a very healthy river. If you're only finding creatures towards the bottom of the list, it's not too healthy. That doesn't take into account any parasites or viruses or anything. It's just simply how healthy the water is, how healthy the ecosystem under the water is. The gear we're going to take is very simple. Kitty's fishing net, quite fine, and a little clear container. And we're going to do something called kick testing. which basically involves us wading into the river in our wellies and we're going to stand in the river put the net below us so downstream of us and we're going to kick all the little stones over dig in the sand and everything these little microorganisms are going to get washed down and hopefully get caught in the net and then we're going to be able to take a look to see what we've got now you're probably thinking this has got nothing to do with bushcraft or survival but it has everything to do with it if you are fly fishing You need to know exactly what the fish are feeding on and you need to know what they're feeding on in all the stages of its life cycle. That is super important. It takes a long time to learn but it's definitely worth it. Hopefully we're going to see some of those things that trout feed on now. Well we've got a good selection of animals already. Okay we've got quite a good selection in here. All right this fella here is a mayfly larvae. Notice the three tails and that would normally live in the mud or in the sand. They turn into something that's called a green drake, a big up-winged fly. I'll put a picture on now. This one's another sort of mayfly, this little flat fella here. Almost looks like an elongated crab, but it's got the three distinctive tails again. That one lives on the rocks in very fast-flowing water. That one actually turns into a motley brown sort of up-winged fly. The fish absolutely love them. That fella there is not very active, but he's a sort of caddis. They generally make little houses either out of little sticks or little stones or sometimes out of like a silky sort of secretion. They live on the rocks. Just in the shot here we've got two different sorts of caddis. We've got this little house which has been made out of sand, very fine sand, and we've got this house which has been made out of very very coarse sand. They've got They've got different sized caddisfly larvae in. I'll put a picture of those up now. Just here we've got a freshwater shrimp and they swim on their sides. Fish absolutely love them. That's an indicator of clear water as well. Right, just here is a water louse. They live right on the bottom and they tend to eat dead leaves and poke around in the muck. Basically a detritivore. They eat dead and decaying plant matter. There's a tiny little worm just on the end of my stick there. That's a sludge worm. They basically just live in the muck, right in the bottom of the river. They can withstand pretty filthy conditions. You can hear these little fellas swimming around. They're just basically another sort of mayfly. Hi-oh, there's a caddis coming out. Look at that. See him? There he is. That's a big, ugly brute. So just from that short little test, you can see there's a hell of a lot of creatures in there. Heck of a lot. For the next test, I'm going to go a little bit further into the middle of the river, where the current's a little bit faster, and I'm going to try it again. Let's see what we've got from that one. Now, in this one, we've got something different. This is a stonefly larvae. And really that fella's top of our list. Come on lad, turn over. Notice it's only got two tails. Looks pretty much like the mayfly larvae but it is different. Much more heavily segmented. They're an indicator of really clear water. They love the fast water. Highly oxygenated water. Now this place looks perfect. We've got a little seasonal stream coming down here and it's pooling just before it gets to the river. You can see oily stains and staining from iron, it's a really manky little pool this. And I think this is where we're going to find the rat-tailed maggot. That is filthy, absolutely filthy. I'll rinse that in the river, hopefully that'll get rid of most of the mud and it should leave us with the animals we're after. Yep, I can definitely see what we're after there. Right, now I've cleaned all the muck out of here because here we've got a rat-tailed maggot. Now these fellas are actually the larvae of a hoverfly. which is a quite a beautiful sort of insect and you'll see them in the summer in your garden fly around very very fast like a cross between a wasp and a bee but that's the horrendous thing they come from you see the huge breathing tube there they live in absolute filth in the bottom of the pond or the bottom of a river and that long tail goes to the surface and that's how they breathe when the water gets really polluted So there you go that's the last one on our list and although it does turn into something quite beautiful you definitely wouldn't want to find it in that form on your plate in a restaurant. There you go everything on our list within the space of a few short minutes. The river behind me is extremely healthy even after the raging floods that we've had in the winter therefore as far as the fishing season goes which starts in a few short days I'm very very hopeful it's absolutely bursting with invertebrates in there. That means there's plenty for the fish to feed on. Really, really looking forward to this season. Hope you've enjoyed this video about kick testing and just checking how healthy your body of water is. Try it for yourself. All you need is a kiddies fishing net and a clear container. That's it. That's all you need. You also need to kind of know what the creatures are as well. But that's something that you're going to learn And if you're serious about fly fishing, it's something you really need to learn, especially on rivers. Reservoirs Where it's stocked you can pretty much just put anything on chuck it out and the fish will eat it In a river it's an entirely different situation. You need to know what's under the water what's hatching, what the fish are feeding on and really the things I've showed you today that's just what lives under the water. That's just kind of larval stages of things. We've got all the terrestrial insects and everything to contemplate as well. I'm not going to confuse you with that though. We'll just leave it at the aquatic invertebrates. Thanks very much for watching. If you found this video useful, please share it with anybody you think might benefit from it. Hit the like button, and if you want to subscribe, subscribe. Thanks for watching. Catch you next time.