Camouflage takes on a whole new level of meaning when you’re fishing urban rivers. You’re not just trying to hide from the fish, you may also be trying not to stand out too much from the rest of the human population – whether you’re hopping on and off public transport, grabbing a beer or a burger, […]
Archive for the 'UK' Category
October 12 2015
Urbantrout sidecasts: Monday 12 October
Manchester’s urban river restorationist Mike Duddy wins the Wild Trout Trust’s Wild Trout Hero award 2015 The BBC goes exploring London’s unseen rivers (and how they’re still affecting parking restrictions on the borders of different boroughs!) How was #Bagmageddon for you? England’s new plastic bag tax could raise £730 million for good causes over the […]
October 1 2015
Urban river restoration: New strength in numbers for grayling in Chesterfield’s Rother
For those of us who like to make a note of future fishing prospects on our urban rivers (not to mention small but significant rewilding stories for our favourite inner city ecosystems!) here’s a good one for the diary. On 25 June this year, according to Brian Clarke in the Grayling Society’s latest newsletter… … the […]
September 25 2015
Cleaning up the Mersey Basin: Urban river cleanups for World Rivers Day 2015 and beyond
Inspired by the success of community cleanup events on urban rivers all over the UK (including the Don, Cale, Slea and Wandle), the Mersey Basin Rivers Trust has announced a new series of last-Sunday-of-the-month river cleanups across the Manchester area. Cleanups will run from 10.30am until around 2pm, and heavy gloves, hot drinks and cake […]
September 21 2015
Pic of the day: Tipping point
You know that moment when all your friends’ Facebook and Twitter feeds start saying we’re tipping over from trout time into grayling season on our urban rivers and streams? Yes, that moment. (Photo: Adrian Grose-Hodge)
September 14 2015
Film night: CATCHing up on the Cale
Just in case you missed this back in April (even if you didn’t, it’s still well worth another look) here’s a great little video recording the moment when CATCH committee members and their local Environment Agency team got all low-cost medieval on a significant barrier to fish migration on the Cale in Wincanton. (And while […]
August 13 2015
Pic of the day: If Carlsberg did balsam bashing…
It’s a fact that invasive non-native species like Himalayan balsam positively thrive in places where the balance of nature has already been thrown out of whack by human activities (not to mention the human activity of bringing them to western Europe from their native home in the Himalayas in the first place!) This makes urban […]
August 5 2015
Urban fly-fishing report: River Frome, Bristol
For the last couple of seasons we’ve been hearing intriguing urban-trouty rumours about the Bristol Frome, a little limestone river which rises in the rural Cotswolds and flows broadly south-west past the university quarter at Frenchay to meet the much larger Avon in the centre of Bristol. So when we heard how respected competition angler (and […]
July 15 2015
Urbantrout welcomes the launch of Rewilding Britain
This morning saw the official launch of a new national charity, Rewilding Britain, with an only slightly ambitious mission statement that includes… … mass restoration of ecosystems in Britain, on land and at sea, reversing the decline in nature so that living systems and our sense of wonder can thrive. Some might argue that the […]