Theo on October 10 2017

Urbantrout sidecasts: Monday 9 October

River mending in an urban Royal Park: installing a Downstream Defender in Richmond Park to improve water quality in south London’s Beverley Brook (Part 2 coming soon!)
The River Restoration Centre visits a range of Healthy Rivers Project sites around Caerphilly in south Wales
The wetter the better? Making the mental leap to treating storm water as a resource instead of a hazard in China, India and the USA
Massive (and massively exciting) new plans for the Trinity River in Dallas…
… and while we’re on the other side of the Pond, why not take in some urban ghetto bass fishing too?
Plotting the natural course of the River Irwell
Lots of events so far, but there’s still time to join the Great River Rescue this month!
UK trout fishing comes to an end for another year: David Bendle dodges the snags to land his last trout of the season

(Photo: John Sutton at Clearwater Photography / South East Rivers Trust)

Tags: Beverley Brook, Caerphilly, Changde, Chicago, Dallas, Dhaka, Fly-fishing, Irwell, London, Manchester, New York, Sidecasts, Trinity River, Trout, Urban fishing, Urban river restoration, Urban rivers

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Theo on August 25 2017

Film night: Riverfly monitoring (and much more) on Sheffield’s prize-winning Porter Brook

So, this film is already showing on the Wild Trout Trust’s Trout in the Town site, but we reckon it’s so important that we want to mirror it here too.

Mending urban and rural rivers alike is all about restarting natural processes, as well as making sure that improvements are bedding in properly. And the work doesn’t stop when the heavy machinery leaves the area – in fact, you could say it’s really only just beginning…

In this case, SPRITE volunteers like Ant Graham are still looking after an award-winning stretch of the Porter Brook in Sheffield (daylighted just 2 years ago, already home to wild trout, and a newly vital component of the Steel City’s resilience to climate change).

Want to get started on monitoring your own stretch of river? Check out the Riverfly Partnership’s website here.

Tags: Films, People, Porter Brook, Sheffield, Trout in Dirty Places, Urban river restoration, Urban rivers, Volunteers

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Theo on August 3 2017

Pic of the day: From Wincanton to the Wandle

Sharing the urban river love is what Urbantrout and Trout in the Town are all about…

… and we know from long experience that there’s no better way to do it than supporting each others’ volunteer events.

A case in point: CATCH chair Gary Hunt recently took a day trip from Somerset to south London, to ~~steal ideas~~ join one of the Wandle Trust’s monthly cleanups, this time at the Goat Bridge gateway to the Wandle Valley Regional Park.

Proving that karma really does exist, all that hard work paid off with the sight of at least one truly huge wild Wandle trout during our later tour of some recent river restoration sites. (And no, this wasn’t before we’d stopped off at the pub for a few pints of the capital’s finest…)

Click here to find out more about other locations in the Wild Trout Trust’s Trout in the Town programme, and get in touch with Paul Gaskell if you’d like more information about starting a project of your own.

Tags: Cale, Education and engagement, London, People, Trout, Trout in the Town, Urban river restoration, Urban rivers, Volunteers, Wandle, Wincanton

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Theo on July 17 2017

Urbantrout sidecasts: Monday 17 July

Team England coach Jeremy Lucas reports from this year’s IFFA River International fly-fishing competition on the Ebbw (one of the best post-industrial rivers in Wales!)
News from Manchester: Mersey Basin Rivers Trust and Healthy Rivers Trust merge to form the new Mersey Rivers Trust
20 best places to enjoy London’s rewilded rivers
Flash floods and how to survive them (highly relevant if you work or play in storm drains designed to flush lots of water off a city’s hard surfaces!)
Introducing the Wandle’s new Invasive Non-Native Species Action Plan
Ozymandias in the Anthropocene: a new paper studies cities as emerging geological landforms
Making room for the Waal River in Nijmegen
Want to help start a new Trout in the Town chapter in Chesterfield (which just got an extra 8000 baby grayling from the Environment Agency too?)
Tony Mair nets another urban river: this time it’s Anglesey’s Afon Cefni

(Photo: Jeremy Lucas / Fish&Fly)

Tags: Afon Cefni, Chesterfield, Ebbw, Education and engagement, Fly-fishing, Grayling, Hogsmill, INNS, Llangefni, London, Manchester, Mersey, Nijmegen, Rewilding, Rother, Sidecasts, Trout, Urban fishing, Urban river restoration, Urban rivers, Waal, Wandle

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Theo on July 4 2017

Pic of the day: CHALK on the Wandle

Thanks to a recent edition of Simon Cooper’s always-entertaining weekly newsletters, we know two things about the crowdfunded CHALK movie (billed as ‘a feature length film celebrating the importance of the chalkstreams of southern England in the history and development of fly fishing’).

Firstly, it’s on: filming has already begun.

Secondly, some of it has been shot on the Wandle in south London, where the locals once taught Frederic Halford himself to cast an upstream dry fly, though we’re told we’ll have to wait a bit to see if, and how, the 21st-century talent caught one of the famous new-era Wandle trout.

(The tantalising screenshot above suggests so, but there are still a few bits of old metal in that stretch beside the scrapyard, so…)

Watch this space for updates!

(Photo: Simon Cooper)

Tags: Education and engagement, Films, Fly-fishing, London, Trout, Urban fishing, Urban rivers, Wandle

Filed under UK 2 Comments

Theo on June 26 2017

London Rivers Week 2017 is here!

If you’re into urban rivers and everything about them (like we are) there’s no bigger or better event than London Rivers Week…

… which has just been launched on the banks of the Ravensbourne in Ladywell Fields in Lewisham.

As Thames21’s London Rivers Week web hub says:

London Rivers Week aims to inspire people like you to take pride in our waterways, understand the challenges they face and come together to create a healthy future for our rivers.

Catchment Partnerships and environmental organisations such as Thames21, ZSL, London Wildlife Trust, the Environment Agency and the South East Rivers Trust are putting on public events, walks and talks at special river sites.

London Rivers Week is a chance to celebrate the capital’s many rivers, and all the work going on to rewild and restore them. This includes bringing them above ground (daylighting); creating or restoring new wetlands, or breaking them out of concrete channels. Londoners all across the city are helping reclaim, rescue and restore our rivers, and we urge you to join them!

London Rivers Week 2017 is sponsored by Thames Water (psst… the Thames Tideway Tunnel is on its way!) and there’s lots more information here to help you get involved…

(Photo: Thames21)

Tags: Education and engagement, London, Ravensbourne, Rewilding, Thames, Urban regeneration, Urban river restoration, Urban rivers, Volunteers, Wandle

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Theo on May 26 2017

Pic of the day: Fun in the sun, cleaning up the Frome

It’s fair to say that this photo caused a bit of unexpected kerfuffle when it appeared on Facebook a few days ago (Can you or can’t you legally pull shopping trolleys and other rubbish out of your local river? The authoritative answer: Yes, you can!)

We also say: Kudos to Dan, Simon and Richard and other Friends of the River Frome for clearing four full canoe loads of crap (including 5 shopping trolleys, 2 bicycles, a motor scooter and a huge industrial fan!) out of this lovely little urban river, and Frome Town Council for taking away the rubbish at the end.

Want to help out too? FORF’s next cleanup is scheduled for 10.00am on Saturday 3 June…

(Photo: Friends of the River Frome)

Tags: Education and engagement, Frome, People, Urban river restoration, Urban rivers, Volunteers

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Theo on May 16 2017

Urbantrout sidecasts: Monday 15 May

Exploring ‘the drain’: David James Bendle takes a friend fishing on an Irwell tributary
‘Haunted rubble and half-vanished walls’ on the banks of Winchester’s River Itchen
Tenkara in the edgelands: David West Beale gets his stalk on
SERT takes out the River Club weir on the Hogsmill near Tolworth in south London
The Littering Fisherman: a thinkpiece for those of us who spend more time picking up other people’s rubbish than dropping it ourselves!
Get ready for London Rivers Week (26 June – 3 July 2017) with SERT and Thames 21
Tony Mair goes (inadvertently) poaching in Cardiff
Why not ride for rivers at this year’s London to Brighton cycle ride?
Want to live by the award-winning upper Wandle, where lots of this urban fishing and river mending thing got started? Maybe here’s your chance…

(Photo: David James Bendle)

Tags: Cardiff, Hogsmill, Irwell, Itchen, London, Manchester, Sidecasts, Taff, Tenkara, Trout, Urban fishing, Urban river restoration, Urban rivers, Urban tenkara, Wandle, Winchester

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Theo on May 3 2017

Film night: Pollution hits the Irwell (again)

It’s a sickening experience to see your local river destroyed by pollution, but with the best will in the world there’s nothing very much for outside observers to say or do except sympathise deeply, offer any support that’s needed, and thank their lucky stars that it wasn’t their river… this time.

That’s why we’ve been slow to say much about the latest – and this time massive – pollution incidents to hit the magnificent River Irwell, wiping out invertebrates for at least 25 miles and putting the river’s recent recovery in real jeopardy.

Instead, we’ll let locals like Mike Duddy and David James Bendle do the talking, in film clips like the one above, and latest reports like these ones here, here and here.

As usual in such appalling incidents, once that first adrenaline hit of panic and fury has subsided a little, everything goes spookily quiet while the EA investigates (and pre-General Election purdah probably isn’t helping much at the moment either).

The rest of us can only watch and hope that the Agency’s efforts eventually produce something positive for the future of the Irwell, even if some past form may suggest unhappily otherwise. We’ll relay any updates when we hear them ourselves.

Tags: Films, Irwell, Manchester, People, Pollution, Urban river restoration, Urban rivers

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Theo on April 8 2017