Urbantrout winter fly-fishing gear: Get your karma on today (and a free car sticker too)

Urbantrout trout 1

Will wearing Urbantrout gear help you catch more or bigger fish?

Despite convincing photographic evidence since our launch earlier this year, that’s one result this eco-brand probably still can’t guarantee.

But we do know you’ll look good and feel full of good karma wearing our carefully designed urban fishing gear. And since successful fishing is all about confidence in your gear, as well as certainty that there really are fish in front of you somewhere…

… well, you do the sums.

Best of all, now the cold weather grayling season has well and truly arrived, we’re giving away a FREE Urbantrout car window sticker worth £3.00 with every item purchased from the Urbantrout online shop for the rest of November.

(Hint: we’re definitely recommending our hoodies and urban steelheader beanies to help you handle all those paranoid-tabloid headlines… and if you’re heading for the mountains this winter, we think they’ll look pretty damn sharp on the slopes too!) 

Fish where you live, rock your urban fly-fishing… and buy your four-seasons fishing gear right here!

Urbantrout grayling 3

Urbantrout trout 2

Urbantrout grayling 2

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The Urbantrout Diaries: Discovering the Dour

Dour 3

A few weeks ago the South East Rivers Trust team (with Urbantrout editor specially embedded) took a tour of Dover to find out more about another urban chalkstream, the Dour.

Around this little river’s neatly ponded headwaters, manicured public parks now take the place of mill-owners’ private grounds: from here, its chalky, gravelly gradient quickly drops away into a busy sequence of ancient milling sites, burrowing between back gardens until it disappears completely under car parks and shopping centres, and finally trickles through a concrete underpass into Dover harbour.

Documenting our journey of urban exploration, the third episode of The Urbantrout Diaries is now live on Flyfishing.co.uk. Click here to read the full report!

Dour trout

Dour 1

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Restoring the Red River: Manchester’s River Medlock

Manchester Medlock river culvert

At last week’s Wild Trout Trust Conservation Awards (no urban winners this time, but we salute them all just the same!) many of our fellow river restorationists kept coming back to one fascinating subject of debate…

… the massive ongoing project work by the Environment Agency, Groundwork and the Irwell Rivers Trust to restore Manchester’s River Medlock.

After the notorious flood of July 1872, when a full month’s rain fell in two days and the Medlock’s erosive power even washed bodies out of the Phillips Park cemetery, the city fathers took the decision to lock the river in place with some of the heaviest armouring ever seen (newly installed in the picture above).

Eight million bright red Accrington bricks (so hard and indestructible they were also used to build parts of the Empire State Building, and still look almost new after weathering a century of Medlock storm flows) were laid onto concrete foundations in a U-shaped flume through Clayton Vale and Phillips Park. Not surprisingly, the Medlock quickly became known as the Red River, and this programme of brutal dredging and canalisation only served to accelerate flood waters even faster into its overloaded confluence with the Irwell in Manchester city centre.

Now, thanks to the Water Framework Directive, and rather more enlightened philosophies of flood risk management (though there’s clearly still work to be done), some of the mistakes of the past are being rectified. Following weir reduction work in Clayton Vale as part of the Irwell catchment restoration pilot, the Red River’s brick lining is being removed, and its natural hydromorphology is being carefully recreated in a project lasting well into 2014 and beyond.

Click here to watch the BBC’s short film on the Medlock project, and here to read the Guardian’s report on restoring the Medlock and other lost urban rivers across the UK.

Here at Urbantrout, we’ll be avidly watching for updates on this fascinating case study page on the Restore Europe’s Rivers EU Life-funded Wiki (especially in view of a local angler’s experience of what some parts of the Red River can already produce!)

And we’ll also remember one prominent river restorationist’s only slightly wistful comments at the WTT Awards…

… Who knows what forces of hydromorphology will be unleashed once they take that whole river out of that concrete strait-jacket it’s worn for the last hundred years…

… and why not just let it go again and see what happens?

Medlock brick - Environment Agency

(Photos: Environment Agency)

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Film night: Taking a tour of the Bradford Beck

Thanks once again to our good friend Dr Gaskell’s epic editing skillz, this week’s film night presents a reprise of this summer’s Trout in the Town sponsored Urban Rivers Conclave.

This time it’s Professor David Lerner (head of the URSULA research project) taking us on an enthralling tour of the Aire Rivers Trust’s pilot for Defra’s Catchment Based Approach, now rolled out nationally via the Catchment Partnership Fund, on that perennial urbexers’ favourite Bradford Beck.

Whenever you can find 22 minutes to watch this, grab a cuppa or a cold one, and don’t let your river restorationist’s notebook too far out of reach!

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The Urbantrout Diaries: Bashing balsam

Superfine and balsam

The second episode of The Urbantrout Diaries recently went live on Flyfishing.co.uk

For the first couple of years, it seemed our balsam-bashing efforts would never get off the stretch of river at Richmond Green, right where the infant Wandle trickles out of a concrete culvert on the boundary between Sutton and Croydon, echoing with post-industrial mockery of a proper karstic cave-mouth. 

This year, however, with many more of our regular volunteers realising the benefits of clearing the Himalayan balsam monoculture from the upper Wandle, we’ve suddenly seen much more progress. A big volunteer effort in partnership with Thames 21 and 500 corporate interns in August 2011 had already made a huge difference. In the meantime, I’d also taken took huge personal pleasure in clearing that bloody balsam from the Carshalton arm of the river, repeatedly sweeping the area around the famous ponds where, urban rumour insisted, a nameless park attendant had brought the spring-loaded seed-pods from Croydon because he thought the plants looked nice…

Click here to read the full feature (including shots at hefty urban chub and dace… sometimes it’s not all about the trout!)

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Celebrating our urban rivers: World Rivers Day 2013

Sheena Goode with trophy - Mick Pogson

Having been very closely involved in bringing World Rivers Day to south London for the first time in 2008, there’s nothing that gives the Urbantrout team more pleasure than seeing this international celebration of rivers flourishing more and more widely every year across the UK.

While we joined fellow urban fly-fishers Dom Garnett and Charles Rangeley-Wilson at the Wandle Piscators’ angling fair (where, rumour has it, one new junior club member even caught a trout just outside the William Morris pub at Merton Abbey Mills) …

… the Slaithwaite & District Angling Club also epitomised our fish where you live philosophy by running their annual friendly fishing competition on the urban Yorkshire Colne.

As usual, this competition helps to monitor populations of trout and grayling in this much-loved (and much-abused) urban river, with entry fees divided between the club and the Calder & Colne Rivers Trust.

12 anglers took part in this year’s event, split equally between beats above and below Slaithwaite in the morning, and switching over for the afternoon session.

By the end of the day, 272 trout and 23 grayling had been caught, measured and carefully returned to the water.

The overall competition was won by Robert Brown, while Sheena Goode lifted the huge, shiny Walter Moorhouse trophy for best-placed club member, and the prize for the biggest fish went to Ben Tunnacliffe for an awesome 55cm brown trout.

We’ll call that a solid 22 inches in old money – an astonishing way to celebrate World Rivers Day on a recovering urban river!

Colne trout - Mick Pogson

Slaithwaite competitors - Mick Pogson

Ben Tunnacliffe with Colne trout - Mick Pogson

For more details of the competition, check out this thread on the Fly Forums, and organiser Mick Pogson’s own photo gallery.

(All photos: via Mick Pogson)

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World Rivers Day: Sunday 29 September

URBANTROUT AD - JUNE 2013

This year’s World Rivers Day will be marked in south London by the official launch of the Living Wandle HLF-funded urban landscape partnership projects – and Urbantrout will be there too!

5 years on from the Wandle Piscators’ first World Rivers Day event in 2008, the angling club is hosting a fishing-themed event from 12 – 5pm in the William Morris, on the mid-point of the Wandle at Merton Abbey Mills.

Alongside fly-tying demonstrations and book signings by Charles Rangeley-Wilson (Silt Road) and Dominic Garnett (Flyfishing for Coarse Fish) and much more, we’ll have our full range of eco-branded hoodies, beanie hats, fishing caps and t-shirts to try and buy, as well as signed copies of Trout in Dirty Places.

If you’re anywhere near south London this Sunday, come and join our festival of urban river restoration!

World-Rivers-Day-2013

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Urban fly-fishing report: River Holme, Holmfirth

Duncan Soar Photography: Holmefirth - August 2013 &emdash;

With this year’s northern European trout season winding down all too rapidly…

… Urbantrout editors-at-large Rich Baker and Duncan Soar recently took the opportunity to hit Yorkshire’s upper Holme after work.

In Duncan’s case, work means professional photography – so the tools of his trade always come easily to hand.

No captions needed. This photo essay speaks for itself!

Duncan Soar Photography: Holmefirth - August 2013 &emdash;

Duncan Soar Photography: Holmefirth - August 2013 &emdash;

Duncan Soar Photography: Holmefirth - August 2013 &emdash;

Duncan Soar Photography: Holmefirth - August 2013 &emdash;

Duncan Soar Photography: Holmefirth - August 2013 &emdash;

Duncan Soar Photography: Holmefirth - August 2013 &emdash;

Duncan Soar Photography: Holmefirth - August 2013 &emdash;

(Photos: Duncan Soar)

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Urbantrout sidecasts: Monday 16 September

Hogsmill weir breaking - Wandle Trust

(Photo: Wandle Trust)

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Urbantrout peaked beanie hats: Grab yours today!

Urbantrout beanie hats

Now September’s almost two weeks old, we’ve suddenly started noticing a real chill in the air… and we’re doubly delighted to announce the arrival of our super-funky new range of urban steelheader-style beanies.

From our description over in the Urbantrout shop:

Whatever this winter throws at you, you’ll fish more effectively when you’re wearing one of our double-layered cable-knit beanie hats. They’re designed with a short front peak to shield your eyes from the worst of the rain, snow and sleet, while a heavy fold of fabric (subtly tagged with the Urbantrout logo) pulls right down to keep your ears warm. Generously sized, too, so you can even make like a proper Trout Bum steelheader and wear yours over a baseball cap!

Priced at just £20 plus P&P, in a choice of Chocolate or Olive stripe, these exclusive new beanies can be purchased online right here, right now.

As usual, 10% of profits from these hats will go to fund urban river restoration projects. Get properly geared up for winter – grab yours today!

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