Invasive non-native species (INNS) tend to thrive most vigorously in places where human impacts are greatest. And that, of course, often means city river corridors and other edgelands where urban river restorationists and fly-fishers like to ply our trade. Now balsam (and floating pennywort, rhododendron, mink, signal crayfish etc…) bashing season is here again, Merlin […]
Archive for the tag 'INNS'
July 28 2014
Urbantrout sidecasts: Monday 28 July
Urban wildlife through the lens: south London photographer Tomos Brangwyn shoots a Wandle / Ravensbourne inner-city kingfisher story for the Daily Mail Salford Friendly Anglers win the Angling Trust’s 2014 Fred J Taylor Award for their work on the Irwell catchment New research from Cardiff University shows pollution-sensitive species recolonising urban rivers… … but it’s […]
June 30 2014
Pocket Guide to Balsam Bashing: Signed copies now available in the Urbantrout shop
Just a heads up to let our readers know that signed copies of the newly-published Pocket Guide to Balsam Bashing are now available from the Urbantrout online store (along with lots of other great eco-branded merchandise!) Here’s how Andrew Herd, eminent author of The Fly and many other definitive works, recently reviewed Balsam Bashing: If ever […]
May 6 2014
The Urbantrout Diaries: Taking the fight to invasive non-native species
Just in case you missed it last week, the latest instalment of the Urbantrout Diaries series went live on Thursday, revealing some of the background and thinking behind the soon-to-be-published guide to tackling invasive non-native species entitled Pocket Guide to Balsam Bashing: Even whilst relishing the totally counterintuitive wonder of urban fly-fishing, a sense of […]
October 7 2013
The Urbantrout Diaries: Bashing 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 […]
July 18 2013
Urbantrout sidecasts: Thursday 18 July
How the Welsh fly-fishing team won gold in the 2013 Rivers International on the rejuvenated Taff: Kieron Jenkins reports News from the Wandle: confirmation of the HLF’s very first urban landscape partnership scheme worth £1.9m, newly-deculverted headwaters in Croydon… and it’s open season on Himalayan balsam! Somewhere near Stanton, Mick Martin tracks down one of […]
May 15 2013
Urban fly-fishing report: Calder, Irwell and Tame
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 […]
March 1 2013
Film night: Biosecurity TV
Many of the rivers and streams in our towns and cities have quite enough problems already… so why risk adding any more in the form of invasive species carried by anglers and others who work and play in and around the water? In this inspiring short film that’s already going viral across the internet, Riverfly […]
September 24 2012
Urban fly-fishing report: Rea Brook, Shrewsbury
Urbantrout reader Spencer Clayton fishes many Borderland rivers including the Teme and Onny – and after reading chapter 21 of Trout in Dirty Places earlier this year, he’s been inspired to start exploring Shrewsbury’s magical little Rea Brook too. At the end of last week he sent us this great catch report and selection of […]
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, […]
