Urbantrout returned to the British Fly Fair International this weekend, joining the Wild Trout Trust crew on their stand to sign even more copies of Trout in Dirty Places and officially launching our very own eco-branded hoodies, t-shirts, fishing caps and window stickers. As ever, the fair provided a perfect occasion to represent the urban […]
Author Archive
June 17 2013
Launching Urbantrout’s new urban fly-fishing gear!
Today we’re delighted to announce a major development for Urbantrout: the launch of our new range of urban street-style fly-fishing gear… … with 10% of annual profits going directly to help fund urban river restoration projects. As we’ve said over on our full announcement page… If you want to stroll the banks of a manicured […]
June 14 2013
Film night: Resilience and sharing a sense of place
Via the Wild Trout Trust’s Trout in the Town blog comes this superb video from the recent Urban River Champions’ Conclave, hosted 3 weekends ago by Salford Friendly Anglers. Over 40 minutes, keynote speaker (and urban tenkara fisher, blade-runner and river restorationist) Phil Sheridan tells a quietly riveting story of global travel, personal resilience, and […]
June 4 2013
Urbantrout sidecasts: Tuesday 4 June
Rubbish, art or both? The Wandsworth Arts Festival headlines with urban gyotaku-style tote bags and a Cabinet of Curiosities from the Wandle… … while Trolleywise launches a handy new app for getting 400,000 lost trolleys back every year (hat tip to Urbantrout reader Arabella Mileham at The Grocer)… … and we remember the brilliant Stray […]
May 31 2013
Urban fly-tying: Tim James, Tavistock
Readers of last year’s best-selling urban fly-fishing blockbuster may recall how impressed we were by the locally-tied flies of Tavistock fishing guide Tim James… … which we loved enough to pick up a generous handful from the counter of English Country Pursuits, the town’s huntin’, shootin’ and fishin’ shop. Some of these featured in chapter […]
May 21 2013
Urban river projects: Celebrating our successes (and why there’s no such thing as inevitability)
Ahead of this weekend’s third biennial Urban River Conclave, co-ordinated by the Wild Trout Trust and hosted by Salford Friendly Anglers, the WTT’s most excellent Paul Gaskell has posted this thoughtful piece on his Trout in the Town blog. Last year, he admits, he spent a lot of time drawing together an application to the […]
May 15 2013
Urban fly-fishing report: Calder, Irwell and Tame
With successive weather fronts blowing in from the Atlantic, flexibility and a functioning sense of humour were just enough to bring success when the Urbantrout team visited northern Manchester’s river systems last weekend. Starting our campaign on one of those classically post-industrial Calder tributaries, we indulged our passion for urban exploration to find bruiser trout […]
May 10 2013
Film night: Wandle mills and the lessons of hydropower history
This being the UK’s National Mills Weekend, we thought we’d take this opportunity to show an intriguing little film which recently came to our attention, thanks to the excellent Wandle Industrial Museum. Almost 12 minutes of footage (somewhat hauntingly, no soundtrack) show several Wandle mill wheels still turning at some time during the 1960s or […]
May 7 2013
Rivers by Design: A new primer for urban and post-industrial river restorationists everywhere
Last week’s annual River Restoration Centre conference was buzzing with conversation about an exciting new publication by the EU LIFE+ funded RESTORE partnership project: the Rivers by Design manual. Rivers by Design is subtitled A guide for planners, developers, architects and landscape architects on maximising the benefits of river restoration. So it was always likely […]
April 25 2013
Trout in the Classroom: Rewilding kids and rivers
This time last week, environmental writer-campaigner George Monbiot (personal mottos: Comfort the afflicted, afflict the comfortable and Unreconstructed idealist, professional troublemaker) visited south London’s River Wandle to watch the Wandle Trust’s Trout in the Classroom trout fry release by local urban schoolkids in Morden Hall Park. His feature about the project and its wider implications […]
