No. Black currants won't ripen off the bush. Birds never go after mine but they do eat the redcurrants and strip them long before they are fully red. Luckily redcurrants will ripen off the bush as long as there is a little pink showing. But they are never quite as good as fully ripe ones. I'm wondering what cultivar of BC you have. Mine are no more than waist high. Easy to net if

I needed to.

I don't know as I have had them so long and just propagate from cuttings every year or so.

I did net them last year but omitted to take the net off so that they have grown through it and I would need maybe a length of 6 metre netting to re-cover them.

Maybe ,if I am conscientiously beastly to the birds I can put them off enough to share the lion's part with them of what is sticking out above the net and perhaps there will be a few more under the old netting if I am lucky.

You propagate every year or so? Mine are at least twenty years old. Why do you start again so frequently? How do they get so big in such a short life? Are you pruning regularly?

I 'sew' two or three lengths of netting side by side with thin wire to get a piece big enough for my red currants. Bought on the roll 6m is easily got.

My reds are just starting. The blacks aren't anywhere near ripening yet.

I have a good dozen or so and one or two peg out from one year to the next and I replace them as I go.

I don't think I pruned them very conscientiously last year and they grew out of the top of the net(double netted actually).

I have other younger ones growing s singly and they are easy to net.

I had good results keeping the birds off my tomatoes and blackberries by loosely wrapping the fruits/branches with bags made from sheer polyester drapery fabric, and I even used whole lengths of the same cloth, clipped together to cover whole areas of the berry plants.

I gave up bird netting after black racers got entangled, and one died before I could find and free it.

I've also used this with mixed results*:

*The tape doesn't seem to work on mockingbirds - I don't think they're scared of anything

😄