I’m knee-deep in the river Tame in Stalybridge, 15 miles east of Manchester. Beside me is Woz Andrew, a local fly-fishing guide. After climbing down a flight of stone steps from road level – hollowed by a century of boots and a remnant of this river’s industrial past – we have made our way slowly […]
Author Archive
March 19 2018
Trout & Salmon says: Meet the London rods
After December’s and January’s articles on urban fishing in Holmfirth and South London, Trout & Salmon has only gone and done it again… … with a feature in the April 2018 issue on London-based fly-fishers (and the London Flyfishing Fair on 23-24 March). By now, of course, most readers of Urbantrout won’t need much convincing […]
March 9 2018
The Wild Trout Trust charity auction 2018: Your chance to do good and go fishing!
Over the past few years, urban fishing has become such a fixture in the Wild Trout Trust’s annual charity auction that it’s hard to remember when it wasn’t – and when it was a novel kind of idea for us to list all the urban lots in one place for our readers’ bidding convenience. Still, […]
February 20 2018
Film night: Glen Pointon takes us to the hell-hole
It’s interesting to see how the idea of vlogging has come back round the loop again: maybe it never quite went away, but we’re sure there was some kind of hiatus between the old-skool DSLR / point-and-shoot cameras, and the new wave of smartphone streaming, Instagram stories and, well, you get the picture… Anyway, vlogging […]
February 5 2018
Urbantrout sidecasts: Monday 5 February
Finding Bruce the shark: latest community cleanup news from the Wandle … but it’s double trouble for the Hogsmill, and all that fly-tipping in Wandsworth is getting way beyond a joke Trout in the Town: updates from Birmingham and Coventry Defending Richmond Park’s Beverley Brook from urban runoff (Part 2 – here’s part 1) … […]
January 12 2018
River restoration permit price hike: Please make your voice heard today!
When it comes to the future health of our urban and rural rivers, of course, the really big elephant in the room is Brexit. But while we’re waiting to see how this will (or hopefully won’t) stomp all over the UK’s environmental protections, we want to draw your attention to something much more urgent – […]
January 5 2018
Trout on the Tube: T&S tackles the Wandle
At a time when well-loved print magazines such as Total Flyfisher and Fly Rod & Reel seem to be dropping like flies, it’s reassuring to see venerable titles like Trout & Salmon still going stronger than ever. Of course, staying right on the cusp of current developments in progressive fly-fishing is one way to ensure […]
December 8 2017
Urbantrout beanies and hoodies: Winter is here!
You’ve almost certainly heard the old outdoors saying ‘there’s no such thing as bad weather – only the wrong clothing’. And as another ‘Beast from the East’ (aka Storm Caroline) rolls the winter’s first significant snow across the UK, we’re not going to argue with that. After all, that’s why we bring you the best beanies […]
November 20 2017
Trout & Salmon: Jon Beer fishes Holmfirth
Here at Urbantrout, it’s a constant low-level source of entertainment to watch how different angling writers react to the ambiguous challenge of our urban rivers. One or two usually-intrepid international explorers have proved weirdly squeamish (no names, no pack drill!) – while other less obviously gung-ho personalities are clearly super-keen to get stuck into Dirty […]
November 10 2017
Film night: 3 rivers in Blaenau Gwent
Thanks to Tony Mair for the heads-up on this quietly epic and meditative film about 3 rivers in the Welsh Valleys: the post-industrial Ebbw Fawr, Ebbw Fach and Sirhowy: “From clean brooks to rivers orange with waste, the rivers are part of this place. They have passed through forest, farmland and meadow, and fed the […]
