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)
Theo on 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 we’re talking about weirs and dams, here’s how not to do it on the Dordogne, without even removing the offending dam itself…)
Theo on August 30 2015
Urbantrout sidecasts: Monday 31 August
- How London’s rivers got their names: Londonist takes a tongue-in-cheek look at hidden urban etymology
- In memory of urban fly-fishing guide Gary Hyde: Fly Forums regular Danny Gill organises a most excellent friendly charity fishing competition on Sheffield’s River Don…
- … while the Don Catchment Rivers Trust secures £154k from the Dearne Valley Landscape Partnership and Barnsley Council for fish passage work in the Dearne Connectivity Project
- Fallons Angler visits the Wandle…
- … and the Wandle Trust launches a new River Rangers programme (part of the HLF-funded Living Wandle Landscape Partnership project) with lots of volunteers getting stuck into clearing lots of Himalayan balsam and floating pennywort (it’s #WandleSeptember soon too)
- 5p each from October 2015: England finally plans to put a price on plastic shopping bags (and not before time, some of us might say)
- Is this Britain’s dirtiest river? Another EA-baffling pollution incident hits Manchester’s poor little River Irk (but visit Salford Friendly Anglers’ Facebook page for a vid of John Tyzack catching what may be the river’s first trout on the fly for 200 years!)
- Urban bonanza: Ben Lupton infiltrates a tough stretch of his local river
- Where’s your nearest Trout in the Town project? Check out the Wild Trout Trust’s latest listings here
(Photo: M@ / Londonist)
Theo on 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 rivers, and the edgelands around them, some of the most important invasion pathways for INNS of all kinds.
And that puts urban river restorationists right on the front line.
Since 2010 or even earlier the Wandle Trust’s volunteers have been steadily pushing vast swathes of Himalayan balsam downstream from the river’s headwaters in Croydon and Carshalton, and last Sunday’s efforts were focused on Beddington Park, where Carlsberg recently filmed their latest TV ad, Kickabout.
Which meant we couldn’t help wondering, as we hunted down every last balsam plant on the banks of the Wandle under that sweltering sun…
… If Carlsberg did balsam bashing, how could they possibly do it better than this awesome lot of urban Rivers Trust volunteers?
(Photo: the Wandle Trust / Sally Ann Symis)
Theo on 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 confirmed urban big fish hunter) Robert Brown was marooned in Bristol with fishing wagon problems, far from the Wye & Usk Foundation waters where he’d really planned to be fishing…
… we wondered if he’d like to have his rubber arm twisted volunteer for a bit of urban exploration along the Frome Valley Walkway instead?
Challenge accepted, came back the answer. And here’s the brilliant report he sent us:
By the time I was able to visit the Frome, it was the end of June and not ideal conditions as it was dead low – barely a trickle – and quite clear. Not ideal conditions for fishing as there were few flies and a lot of trout could be in hiding. However, quite good for surveying as visibility was so good.
As it was trout were thin on the ground. I had 8 trout over 2 days fishing totalling about 10 hours. My first fish was quite a good one of about 2 1/4lb. This was also the biggest I saw; though I saw 2 others that were close to 2lb and had a fish of around 1.5lb. Most of the rest were about 30cm. All the smaller fish came out of the streamy water, whilst the bigger fish (pictured above) was stalked. With effort you could probably get more. I spent quite a lot of my time chasing the abundant dace and chub. This was quite fun and I even had a bream, but that probably gives you a good idea of the kind of water it is – perfect for dace and chub, with the odd trout.
The river bed is about 20 feet wide on average and where there is flow mostly very shallow. Mostly this water doesn’t have the depth trout would require where it is in a natural state. However, being post industrial it is regularly impounded by weirs with long flats resulting. Again not ideal trout water, though the weir pools mostly have the odd trout in them.
What I couldn’t help noticing was the heavy angling pressure. There were several people fishing on the days I visited. Mostly bait fisherman, but I did meet one fly fisherman. Even the coarse fish are most common in the areas that are inaccessible and/or private. It was very noticeable that such areas had a lot more fish. However, as there is a path among most of the river, and much of it is in public parks, such areas are few and very difficult to access.
As it was, the river was heaving with both people and dogs, being public parkland. No doubt you know the kind of place, but I still don’t think I’ve ever been anywhere with so many dog walkers. It is like all the world’s dog walkers have converged here for some kind of international convention. They arrive in fleets of vans each filled with cages of dogs. It is manic. Compared with here rivers like the Calder, Colne and Irwell really do feel like wildernesses.
To be fair, I probably didn’t see the river at its best – it would have been nice to go one evening, or earlier in the season; or when it had more water. Or there was some kind of hatch.
If you do visit then there are car parks at Oldbury Park and Snuff Mills with good access to the water. Snuff Mills seems to be a hot spot with fish to 5lb reported from the weir pool there on bait. Further down the top part of Eastville Park is nice water, but hammered by anglers as I’ve mentioned above.
The Bristol Frome now comes under the care of the Bristol Avon Rivers Trust.
If you’re a local angler who’d like to get involved in a little urban river restoration, why not think about getting in touch with BART or even the Wild Trout Trust to start a new Trout in the Town project?
(Photos: Robert Brown)
Theo on 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 UK’s third sector landscape is already full to bursting with wildlife and conservation charities, all competing for public attention and the same shrinking funding pots. Do we really need another one?
Here at Urbantrout, we say yes, in this case we do.
Rewilding Britain presents a properly Big Idea, facing up to the colossal scale of our collective environmental challenges, and the undeniable fact that the UK’s conservationists can’t just carry on doing the same things and expecting different results. (As Einstein reputedly once said, that’s the definition of insanity).
If you haven’t yet picked up a copy of George Monbiot’s highly influential book Feral, almost certainly the launch pad for Rewilding Britain, we highly recommend it: we spoke extensively with George when he wrote about the Wandle Trust in 2013, and we’re thrilled to see the Wandle featuring as a case study on Rewilding Britain’s new website.
In fact, at this point in time, it’s possible that the urban river restoration movement is the most visibly successful form of rewilding yet.
That’s because we’re not just concerned with restarting catchment-scale natural processes in rivers that were still biologically dead within our own clear memory, so that beautiful, iconic clean-water species like trout and grayling can live again in our post-industrial edgelands.
With lots of personal experience, we’ve also been inspired by the idea of reconnecting people with their local rivers, providing them with a sense of ownership and access to blue-green spaces that transform their quality of life, perhaps even giving them a positive reason for living in the city.
Trout in Dirty Places took a snapshot of the state of urban river restoration in the UK in 2011/12, and this site is still tracking the urban river restoration movement as it spreads across our towns and cities. Today, we’ve just become a part of an even bigger picture.
So welcome, Rewilding Britain. Fish Where You Live – and thanks for joining us on the grapple!
(Photos 2 and 3: Wandle Trust)
Theo on July 11 2015
Urban river restoration: Manchester’s River Irwell makes headlines in the Telegraph
If you’ve followed this blog for any time at all, you’ll have no doubt about how much we love Manchester’s mighty Irwell system and its big wild trout. So we’ve been truly stoked to see that awesome urban river getting full attention from this weekend’s Telegraph…
… complete with a namecheck for Trout in Dirty Places, and a profile of three generations of the Duddy family who’ve been closely involved in the river’s restoration so far:
Tom taught in the girls’ grammar school in the early 1970s, which was on the banks of the Irwell.
“The river then was a by-word for filth and pollution,” he says. “If anybody fell in, they would be carted off to hospital straight away. Fortunately, Salford Royal was right next door to the school!”
Now, here we are in 2015 and Manchester’s Lowry Hotel is offering guided fly fishing trips on its own river – the Irwell. Tom can’t quite believe he has lived to see it.
Salford Friendly Anglers is reputedly the oldest angling club in the world: today it boasts 2,500 members, and hosted the Wild Trout Trust’s Urban River Champions’ Conclave in 2013.
Inspired by the Wandle Trust’s ongoing success in restoring south London’s River Wandle (described in the article as ‘the UK’s first urban river success story’) Mike Duddy and the SFA crew are now turning their campaigning sights on cleaning up the Irk as well as developing new fisheries plans for the Irwell, and maybe the rest of the massive Mersey Basin too.
Click here to read Andrew Griffiths’ full story in the Telegraph, here to check out the Lowry’s guided urban fishing trips with Fish On Productions’ John Tyzack, and here if you’re still looking for the perfect fishing hoodies and hats for your own adventures in the urban jungle…
(Photo: Paul Cooper / the Telegraph)
Theo on July 1 2015
Urban fly-fishing report: River Aa, Ouve-Wirquin
Thanks to our good friend Jeremy Lucas, the Urbantrout team has been out on the road again… this time exploring some of the chalkstreams of northern France.
One of these was the River Aa: a ruisseau craie that rises at Bourges on the high chalk plateau of the Artois region, and flows broadly north east to meet the English Channel between Calais and Dunquerque. Within just 40 km, it falls from a height of 122m above sea level to 11m at the point where it meets the Blequin at Lumbres, and is canalised and navigable from St Omer downstream to the sea.
Steep chalkstream headwaters with constant year-round flow can only mean one thing… historic harnessing for hydropower. Which also means that the valley of the upper Aa offers more than a few opportunities for the kind of post-industrial edgeland exploration we love best (and which other, less epicurean fly-fishers, may pass by on the other side!)
At Ouve-Wirquin, for instance, now a sleepy rural town of less than 600 inhabitants, the Aa flows past (and under, and through) an industrial complex which was once a paper mill, then became a welding factory, and was finally abandoned for decades before being converted into a motor museum showcasing the pride and joy of les Brigades de l’Aa – a meeting of motoring and industrial heritage in a place that nature was already rewilding for itself.
According to local newspaper reports, repurposing the old mill apparently took more than 6,700 hours of voluntary work to strip out 109 lorry loads of waste and replace 197m of pipework and guttering… but the former factory’s back is still firmly turned on the Aa.
Generations of rusty, evil-looking pipes are topped off with a single massive concrete retort that looms over the river, while a flock of pigeons flutters in and out of holes in the walls, oblivious to one of their confreres that’s floating, freshly dead but still quite dry, in the margins.
Still, the clear waters and billowing ranunculus beds below are swarming with caseless caddis and blue-winged olive nymphs, and a rare riseform shows where a trout has snatched something off the surface, tucked so far under the Japanese knotweed that no number of daring casts will actually tempt him out into the daylight. It’s already clear that these ruisseaux craie do get a lot of fishing pressure, so chances are good that he’s seen my kind of CDC Plume Tip before – maybe all the more because this stretch of the river has been designated as fly-only and ‘No Kill’ (controlled under the local association’s carte de peche).
Tomorrow, under blistering sun and the keen scrutiny of the local deputy garde, this same pattern will finally earn a triumphant permanent place in my fly box – crowning a long, drag-free drift with a wonderful trout from translucent currents beside the all-weather sports pitch in Wavrans.
But here and now, waist-deep in the big mill pool, I switch back to a pink-beaded tungsten nymph that’s served me well on high-gradient limestone streams back home in the UK, and flip it into the roiling currents along the opposite concrete bank. On the third cast, a sharp tug straightens the subtle grey fly line, and a little silver truitelle goes wildly airborne.
There’s a nasty moment when I think we’re tangled in an all-too-familiar skein of fallen metalwork, but the hook holds, and the glistening beauty of my first French fish for far too many years finally slides into the net under the shadows of that brutalist concrete gantry.
Bonjour, les truites de la France industrielle…
Theo on June 15 2015
Urbantrout sidecasts: Monday 15 June
- The urban trout of a lifetime? Just like that, Manchester’s mighty Irwell system gives up a double for Stewart Carson (and maybe a sea trout too?)
- Tenkara in the Town hits Sheffield’s Hillsborough College
- Daylighting the Roch: work starts in Rochdale town centre
- Now open to the public for the first time in 100 years, a secret garden on a newly accessible (and wildlife-friendly) stretch of the Wandle Trail
- Paul Gaskell reports back from the Afon Cae Person (yes, this one) and brings a new Trout in the Town project to the Lyme Brook, a tributary of the River Trent in Newcastle-under-Lyme
- Disastrous dam building: is it coming back into fashion again?
- New study: historic mining reduced genetic diversity of trout in West Country rivers, but created populations narrowly adapted to each river’s unique cocktail of toxic metals
- Only rain down the drain: Thames 21 launches the UK’s first community drain marking event as part of a suite of urban pollution solutions on London’s River Lea
- Great fun (and no £1,000 fine either)… Dom Garnett goes urban trouting in Sidmouth
(Photo: Stewart Carson / Salford Friendly Anglers)
Theo on June 10 2015
Pic of the day: Urban paradise
What do we mean by posting a second (gasp) successive pic of the day from the Wandle?
We say: well, y’know, it’s Urbantrout’s home water, and when a once-dead city stream is kicking out wild trout of this stamp, we’d be rude not to celebrate our epic good fortune just a little bit.
(Maybe most of all when the backdrop to this perfect fish still included hose pipes, armchairs, bubble wrap, builders’ waste and something essentially car-shaped* that we couldn’t identify for sure… but made a solid rest for the 2-weight rig while we tried not to drop the camera in the river!)
* Disclaimer: it may have been some time since the regular Wandle cleanups visited this secluded spot. We’ll be back.
