The effects of the tragic pollution incident that decimated fish stocks in a popular section of the Pocklington Canal earlier this week might still be felt in several years' time.

That is the grim reality of the devastating blow suffered by the Canal Head section of the picturesque canal.

The event could not have happened at a worse time as many of the fish were ready to begin their annual spawning rituals.

The tragedy began to unfold on Sunday evening when a local resident noticed some dead trout in Pocklington Beck. The following morning more dead and dying trout were observed and the Environment Agency (EA) pollution hot line was called.

A swift response by a team of environment officers had the cause traced within an hour of the initial call - a blocked sewer in Pocklington was surcharging raw sewage into the Beck, which had killed about 100 brown trout to 4lb in weight.

The carnage was unfortunately not confined to the beck as it feeds the canal at Canal Head. In the relatively calm waters of the canal, the sewage soon stripped away all valuable life-supporting oxygen from the water and led to the demise of thousands of fish.

A swift deployment of an oxygenation unit by EA Fisheries officers restored some oxygen and probably alleviated a total wipe-out.

The exact number of fatalities may never be precisely known but thousands of roach to over a pound and tens of tench to 6lb and bream to over 8lb have already been removed from the canal.

The affected section will be restocked but stock fish of the magnitude of some of those lost are not readily available. Scale counts carried out on some of the dead bream showed them to be at least 15 years old.

The sad irony is most of the fish had only recently been returned to the Canal Head section of the canal following a sabbatical in the Melbourne Basin. The fish had been held there while the owners of the canal, British Waterways Board, carried essential de-silting works.

Meanwhile, due to bird predation and to preserve fish stock, the Laybourne Lakes complex has now been opened to pleasure angling without the use of keepnets.

Fixtures until the start of the river fishing season are:

Sunday, June 8: Claxton Pond - Poppleton Rovers;

Red House Lagoon -Huntington WMC.

Wednesday, June 11: Laybourne Lakes - Wednesday Anglers

Saturday, June 14: Claxton Pond - Star AC

Sunday, June 15: Laybourne Lakes - YDAA Committee match; Red House Lagoon - York Angling Association.

Updated: 08:52 Friday, June 06, 2003