on June 24 2013

Urbantrout at the BFFI

BFFI 2013 1

Urbantrout returned to the British Fly Fair International this weekend, joining the Wild Trout Trust crew on their stand to sign even more copies of Trout in Dirty Places and officially launching our very own eco-branded hoodies, t-shirts, fishing caps and window stickers.

As ever, the fair provided a perfect occasion to represent the urban fly-fishing movement and catch up with city river explorers old and new – including David Miller, Gareth Lewis, Dom Garnett, Gary Hyde, Phil Sheridan and Paul Procter – and find out all the Dirty Places they’ve been fishing since this time last year.

We also managed to talk bugs with Stuart Crofts, listen in on Paul Gaskell and John Pearson speaking insightfully about tenkara in the UK, and pick up a signed copy of Peter Hayes’ iconoclastic new book, Fly Fishing Outside the Box.

The new Urbantrout online shop is due to go live in the week of 1 July.

But in the meantime, if you just can’t wait to get your hands on our exciting new urban fly gear, get in touch and we’ll see what we can do!

BFFI 2013 2

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on June 17 2013

Launching Urbantrout’s new urban fly-fishing gear!

URBANTROUT AD - JUNE 2013

Today we’re delighted to announce a major development for Urbantrout: the launch of our new range of urban street-style fly-fishing gear…

… with 10% of annual profits going directly to help fund urban river restoration projects.

As we’ve said over on our full announcement page…

If you want to stroll the banks of a manicured chalkstream, or cast a fly across a well-appointed salmon river, there’s plenty of old-school tweed and waxed cotton to help you look the part.

Alternatively, if you’re planning a week’s survival camp in Norway or Kamchatka, with nothing to keep you alive except bear-spray and space-tech fabrics, the catalogues are crammed with choice.

But what if you’re one of our new tribe of urban fly-fishers who just wants to fish where you live, blend into your busy urban surroundings and remain undetected by everyone except (perhaps) other members of your own movement?

That’s why Urbantrout fly gear is here. 

Like the whole of this website, Urbantrout fly gear is inspired by the pioneering spirit and conservation ethos of urban river restoration and fly-fishing. So we’ve made a big decision.

Every year, we’ll donate a full 10% of Urbantrout-branded product sales profits to urban river restoration projects.

Our reasoning is that without the hard-to-fund projects that are constantly improving our inner-city fisheries as a precious common resource, few of us would be fishing these urban rivers at all.

We’ve also been greatly inspired by the generosity and environmental advocacy of global brands like Orvis and Patagonia… and while we’re vastly smaller (for now) than these industry leaders, we’re no less passionately committed to environmental responsibility.

We freely admit we’ve no idea how much difference we’ll be able to make by donating this deliberately high percentage of our profits, but we want to give it a hell of a good try.

So we hope you’ll choose to use and wear Urbantrout fly gear. And don’t forget to get in touch if you’d like your local urban river restoration project to be considered for a donation.

Our launch range of Urbantrout caps, t-shirts, hoodies and window stickers will be available to try and buy on the Wild Trout Trust’s stand at this weekend’s British Fly Fair International (Saturday 22 June only).

If you’re at the show, come and say hello to fly-fishing’s new eco-brand! After that, you’ll be able to buy direct from our new online shop (coming soon).

Fish where you live, rock your urban fly-fishing, and wear Urbantrout fly gear to show your support for the urban river restoration movement!

Click here to read our press release.

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on June 14 2013

Film night: Resilience and sharing a sense of place

Via the Wild Trout Trust’s Trout in the Town blog comes this superb video from the recent Urban River Champions’ Conclave, hosted 3 weekends ago by Salford Friendly Anglers.

Over 40 minutes, keynote speaker (and urban tenkara fisher, blade-runner and river restorationist) Phil Sheridan tells a quietly riveting story of global travel, personal resilience, and how they’re now reflected in his sense of advocacy and connectedness with his local River Worth in the old milling town of Keighley.

Restoring an urban river, he reminds us, isn’t so much about proving anything to anyone as seeing what you can do with the resources you’ve got at the time. You’ll probably never guess where your efforts may eventually lead… But if you don’t try and do something, who else is going to do that thing that makes a difference?

More than this we won’t even try to reveal, but we highly recommend following film-maker Paul’s advice to get yourself a brew and a biscuit and give yourself a chance to absorb his presentation – it could change your life…

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on June 4 2013

Urbantrout sidecasts: Tuesday 4 June

(Photo: Wandle Trust / Gillian at Crafty Pint)

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on May 31 2013

Urban fly-tying: Tim James, Tavistock

Tims flies 1

Readers of last year’s best-selling urban fly-fishing blockbuster may recall how impressed we were by the locally-tied flies of Tavistock fishing guide Tim James…

… which we loved enough to pick up a generous handful from the counter of English Country Pursuits, the town’s huntin’, shootin’ and fishin’ shop.

Some of these featured in chapter 3 of Trout in Dirty Places, and Tim recently sent us another packet of his latest designs for nationwide testing.

Since then, we’ve got to admit, opportunities for in-depth trials have proved frustratingly elusive (for instance, the Urbantrout team struck out boldly with dry fly rigs and Tim’s flies into the teeth of cold, wind, rain and rising water on both the Taff and Irwell… and struck out completely in the other sense too, with never a sign of a properly rising fish on either river).

But on the upside, several cracking fish fell to his tiny bead-head Pheasant Tail Nymphs on the Frome, and we also managed to engineer chances to feed his beautifully robust-yet-delicate quill-bodied cul de canard Large Dark Olives and Griffith’s Gnats to good trout on the Calder and Tame.

We’re pretty sure that these olive and midge patterns will continue to pull fish up as long as the skies stay overcast and drizzly… and of course we really can’t wait to start trying his hot-head nymphs on certain picky grayling in Huddersfield, Salisbury and Winchester from 16 June onwards.

If you like the look of Tim’s flies as much as we do, we’re reliably informed he may soon be offering selection packs of 12 dries and 12 nymphs for sale through his new website, currently under development.

In the meantime, he can be contacted directly by email, or via the Westcountry Angling Passport Scheme. We say, get your orders in early…

Tims flies 2

Tims flies 3

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on May 21 2013

Urban river projects: Celebrating our successes (and why there’s no such thing as inevitability)

Project proposal wordcloud - Lera

Ahead of this weekend’s third biennial Urban River Conclave, co-ordinated by the Wild Trout Trust and hosted by Salford Friendly Anglers, the WTT’s most excellent Paul Gaskell has posted this thoughtful piece on his Trout in the Town blog.

Last year, he admits, he spent a lot of time drawing together an application to the Big Lottery Fund for an innovative fusion of youth angling opportunities, Trout in the Town style community river care, and the deep environmental engagement offered by fly-fishing and tenkara.

Despite the robustness of data supplied by Substance, Get Hooked on Fishing and Salford Friendly Anglers themselves, the first version of the bid hasn’t proved successful. But Paul uses this experience to make a hard-learned point:

It is really worth flagging up that for every completed project that any charity group or business can actually report on, there are many efforts that may or may not reap the rewards that they deserve.

This, actually, makes those successes (when they do come off) all the more valuable and it should always be appreciated that what might seem, in retrospect, to have been an “inevitable” success – is always in doubt and always at risk right up until the final whistle.

Any setback needs to galvanise future action   – and nothing of note would ever be achieved if people give up at the first sign of difficulty.

All this means that celebrating such not-at-all-inevitable successes will comprise a major feature of this weekend’s eagerly-awaited conclave… which promises a great line-up of motivational speakers, and almost certainly some urban fly-fishing time on the spectacularly-recovering urban River Irwell.

Click here and here for reports on previous Urban River Conclaves, and keep an eye out for Paul’s report on this year’s event in due course!

(Image: Lera)

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on May 15 2013

Urban fly-fishing report: Calder, Irwell and Tame

Theo's trout

With successive weather fronts blowing in from the Atlantic, flexibility and a functioning sense of humour were just enough to bring success when the Urbantrout team visited northern Manchester’s river systems last weekend.

Starting our campaign on one of those classically post-industrial Calder tributaries, we indulged our passion for urban exploration to find bruiser trout sipping down midge and stonefly hatches with fastidious delicacy that was totally deceptive until the hook went home…

… and they decided to pull back!

Adrian fighting trout

Over ginger cake and Kelly kettle tea (maybe there’s a biofuel use for last year’s Japanese knotweed after all?) we also had the pleasure of catching up with Calder & Colne Rivers Trust director Ian Oates and his plans for fish passage on many more of the river’s massive weirs.

Very encouragingly for other river restoration groups with similar challenges, the Trust has already achieved almost-total eradication of floating pennywort in its catchments by means of a strict regime of glyphosate spraying and careful hand-clearance.

Whilst our waders and boots dried in front of a roaring log fire, overnight rain took its toll on the region’s rivers. The upper Irwell was already coloured and rising by the time we reached Nuttall Park on Sunday morning, but Duncan managed to feed a streamer to a solid 2-pounder before we voted unanimously on a return to the Tame.

Slightly rain-shadowed by Lancashire and the western Pennines, the chosen reach of our third river was still running clear enough for the trout to see a blanket hatch of large dark olives through the grey-out under the cloud base (the calendar says May, but the bugs and dominant weather patterns are still a couple of months behind).

Our verdict? It’s still mostly filthy cold and wet out there, but chasing the hatches on our recovering urban rivers has never been so much fun…

Urban exploration

Kelly kettle tea

Duncan's trout

Adrian's trout

Rich's trout

Are you using Trout in Dirty Places as your guide to exploring and fishing your own selection of urban rivers this season?

If you do, contact us afterwards and let us know how you got on!

(Photos 2, 4, 5, 6: Duncan Soar. Photo 7: Adrian Grose-Hodge) 

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on May 10 2013

Film night: Wandle mills and the lessons of hydropower history

This being the UK’s National Mills Weekend, we thought we’d take this opportunity to show an intriguing little film which recently came to our attention, thanks to the excellent Wandle Industrial Museum.

Almost 12 minutes of footage (somewhat hauntingly, no soundtrack) show several Wandle mill wheels still turning at some time during the 1960s or 1970s – the last survivors of more than 90 which once lined this 11-mile river in its industrial heyday. The film maker is unknown, but the museum would be very grateful for any leads or suggestions as to who, when and maybe even why…

At the same time as watching those hypnotic paddles turning, however, it’s also worth remembering that the threat of low-head hydropower returning to many of our recovering post-industrial rivers is very real.

It’s true that there’s powerful romance in Robert Louis Stevenson’s thunder of the wheel, and Victorian angling idylls of cheerful floury-aproned millers feeding pet trout in tranquil mill-ponds. And, as readers of Trout in Dirty Places will certainly remember, there’s nothing we enjoy more than fishing up through canyons of ancient mill buildings whose crumbling walls and industrial traditions may very well be older than America.

But what’s really significant about all this is the fact that those romantic old mills aren’t working any more – and that even now our professional hydromorphologists and community river restorationists are only just beginning to understand and rectify all that destruction inflicted on our rivers by centuries of uncontrolled exploitation for hydropower.

No question about it, we’ve enjoyed watching this vintage Wandle reel as much as (maybe even more than) the next industrial history geek.

Yet given too much public sentimentality and not enough science surrounding national festivals like this weekend, up to 26,000 sites on our rivers could soon find themselves trammelled by a deadly new generation of dark satanic mills complete with habitat-destroying weirs and fish-mincing turbine blades – and all to produce less than 0.5% of the UK’s electricity needs.

As responsible observers and participants in the sweep of history, we need to watch out for that too.

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on May 7 2013

Rivers by Design: A new primer for urban and post-industrial river restorationists everywhere

Typical river problems - RESTORE

Last week’s annual River Restoration Centre conference was buzzing with conversation about an exciting new publication by the EU LIFE+ funded RESTORE partnership project: the Rivers by Design manual.

Rivers by Design is subtitled A guide for planners, developers, architects and landscape architects on maximising the benefits of river restoration.

So it was always likely to be a key inspiration piece for urban river restorationists everywhere… and it’s true to its promise.  In fact, we reckon Rivers by Design amounts to essential reading for anyone, community groups included, who might be contemplating ambitious rewilding plans for their stretch of urban, suburban or post-industrial stream or river.

Internationally-sourced step-by-step case studies range in scale from Calne’s (comparatively tiny) River Marden and east London’s Mayes Brook…

… to Seoul’s Cheonggecheon stream (daylighting by demolition of multi-storey motorways) and the massive 8km restoration of Munich’s mighty Isar River.

Other chapters cover the benefits of improving rivers, economic valuation and funding, defining what you want to achieve, and effective project delivery.

Even if your current plans are slightly more modest than whole-river reconstruction on a floodplain or catchment scale, who knows where a little inspiration might lead?

Rivers by Design is freely available to download as a pdf from the RESTORE website: here at Urbantrout we highly recommend you grab your copy today!

(Image: RESTORE)

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on April 25 2013

Trout in the Classroom: Rewilding kids and rivers

Trout in the Classroom 2013 - with George Monbiot

This time last week, environmental writer-campaigner George Monbiot (personal mottos: Comfort the afflicted, afflict the comfortable and Unreconstructed idealist, professional troublemaker) visited south London’s River Wandle to watch the Wandle Trust’s Trout in the Classroom trout fry release by local urban schoolkids in Morden Hall Park.

His feature about the project and its wider implications has now appeared in the Guardian, complete with reference to Trout in Dirty Places and (we’re delighted to see) coming to many of the same conclusions about the whole Trout in the Town philosophy:

In a way that is hard to explain, trout seem to be more alive than most other animals.

Perhaps it has something to do with their flickering changes of mood – extreme caution, then bold display, skulking in the shadows, then splashing on the surface of the river, sometimes leaping clear of the water – their great speed, their extraordinary beauty, their ability to disappear then flash back into sight, their remarkable range of colour and pattern and shape. And the presence of trout means that other things are alive: they cannot survive and breed without clean, clear water, clean gravel beds and an abundant supply of insect life… 

Thanks in part to (the efforts of trout fishermen), trout are now reappearing in the most unlikely settings. Theo Pike’s book Trout in Dirty Places is illustrated with photos taken amid shopping trolleys and behind housing estates, under flyovers and beside derelict factories, even in a tunnel under Manchester airport. Trout are rapidly returning to revitalised rivers flowing through towns and cities… 

It is true, of course, that our demand for ever-escalating quantities of stuff is now being met by industrial production elsewhere, with catastrophic results for ecosystems in those countries. But deindustrialisation in Britain and other rich nations seems inexorable and probably irreversible. If we live in a post-industrial nation, we might as well make use of that fact. If the Wandle can be restored after such punishment, almost anywhere can.

The full text of George’s article can be found on his Guardian blog, and his next book Feral: Searching for enchantment on the frontiers of rewilding will be published on 30 May by Allen Lane.

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