South London’s River Wandle has had a tough year so far: first a spill of red diesel into its headwaters at Croydon, next a persistent discharge of cooking oil and fat into the back carriers at Morden Hall Park… … and now a spate of sewage from Thames Water’s Beddington sewage treatment works, triggered by […]
Archive for the 'UK' Category
August 21 2012
Urbantrout sidecasts: Tuesday 21 August
The one with the HB Games: Olympic-themed Wandle Trust volunteers get stuck into this year’s crop of Himalayan balsam Salford Friendly Anglers call for scale samples after a likely sea trout comes to net on the Roch … whilst the slightly oddball diversions of their clubhouse get rave reviews from the Telegraph Second-time TRIBUTE: via the Fly Forums, […]
July 30 2012
Urbantrout sidecasts: London Olympics edition
From the source of the Thames in a green and pleasant land to dark satanic mills, the forging of the Five Rings and the invention of the www that enables blogs like this, Danny Boyle’s awe-inspiring “Isles of Wonder” charts the transformation of Britain by the world’s first Industrial Revolution (But… did someone forget to […]
July 20 2012
Film night: Urban river habitat improvement
For several years the Wild Trout Trust has been working closely with the Wandle Trust to improve habitat for trout and other species on South London’s most famous urban chalkstream. In this excellent little case study video, filmed last autumn by Fish On Productions, Trout in the Town programme manager Paul Gaskell (yes, it’s that […]
July 14 2012
Urban getaway: Winchester
With most of the Wandle running high, coloured and functionally un-fly-fishable for weeks (thanks to persistent pulses of urban runoff from surrounding square miles of roads, car parks and paved front gardens, to say nothing of randomly-clustered diesel and cooking oil spillages), one or two Wandle Piscators needed a break. So we took one …
July 11 2012
Urbantrout sidecasts: Wednesday 11 July
Urban flooding: UK government advisers point the finger at celebrity gardeners Double trouble for the Wandle: First red diesel, now cooking oil Revitalising urban rivers: Bella Davies, Angela Gurnell and Dave Webb talk to NERC in South London Trout in the distillery? Paul Gaskell dispenses wise habitat advice in Oban Big brown water on the Kelvin: […]
July 4 2012
Urban fly-fishing: 10 top tips in Eat, Sleep, Fish
Having spent the last couple of years travelling around the UK, visiting the Wild Trout Trust’s Trout in the Town chapters and investigating the state of our urban rivers at the start of the 21st century, I’ve come to the startling but joyful conclusion that there’s probably now more water in and around our towns […]
June 23 2012
Miracle on the Irwell
It’s all happening in Media City. Just a few days after Nick Carter’s big lunchbreak trout hit the blogosphere, ITV News has aired this 2-minute local spot charting the Irwell’s recovery over the past 30 years, thanks largely to the (uncredited) Mersey Basin Campaign. Chub, trout and several Salford Friendly Anglers are briefly interviewed… This is […]
June 15 2012
Lunch break trout
Is it possible to catch a trout on your lunch break in Manchester city centre? As existential questions go, this one has clearly been haunting Salford Friendly Anglers‘ co-founder Nick Carter for a while. But after surviving at least one close encounter with something of the Mancunian night (hint: it’s 18 stone and wears a […]
June 6 2012
Breaking news: Thames Water’s £400k for the Crane
It’s been months in the making… but finally comes news of a breakthrough in the negotiations on north west London’s River Crane. As this Thames Anglers’ Conservancy report reminds us, the river suffered a catastrophic sewage spill at the end of October last year when a 6-tonne penstock jammed in Thames Water’s main sewage pipe […]
