Another one bites the dust: latest news of fish passage improvements on south London’s little Hogsmill River CATCH ‘em young: Wincanton’s newly-formed community river restoration group draws crowds at the town’s first Sunday street market Sheffield University becomes the UK’s biggest urban water research group Changing perceptions of a dirty river: Action Irwell’s Eric Owen […]
Archive for the tag 'Manchester'
May 21 2013
Urban river projects: Celebrating our successes (and why there’s no such thing as inevitability)
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 […]
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 18 2013
Urban fly-fishing report: River Tame, Saddleworth
In bitterly cold conditions that he could only describe afterwards as raining, snowing, sleeting, absolutely everything… … Urbantrout editor-at-large (and key consultant on Trout in Dirty Places) Richard Baker spent his northern opening day fly-fishing the urban upper reaches of the Mersey system controlled by Saddleworth Angling Society. When his fingers had thawed enough to […]
February 25 2013
Urbantrout sidecasts: Monday 25 February
Midcurrent reviews the latest Orvis fly-fishing sling pack (we’re loving the digital camo colourway for stealthy urban ops… stay tuned for something special!) Retreat from trouble: the Porter Brook’s native white-clawed crayfish are evacuated from Sheffield city centre to a high-altitude ark site somewhere in the surrounding Pennines A few miles upstream from that tunnel, […]
September 20 2012
Urbantrout sidecasts: Thursday 20 September
Trout in (maybe slightly less Dirty, market-towny sorts of) Places: Urban fly-fishing breaks cover in this week’s Shooting Times magazine What’s Environment Agency NW planning for Manchester’s River Medlock? We’ll investigate and let you know! Digging up the river: after the Wandle’s latest pollution incident, fish passage work continues as planned… … while Peter Lapsley […]
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, […]
June 23 2012
Miracle on the Irwell
It’s all happening in Media City. Just a few days after Nick Carter’s big lunchbreak trout hit the blogosphere, ITV News has aired this 2-minute local spot charting the Irwell’s recovery over the past 30 years, thanks largely to the (uncredited) Mersey Basin Campaign. Chub, trout and several Salford Friendly Anglers are briefly interviewed… This is […]
June 15 2012
Lunch break trout
Is it possible to catch a trout on your lunch break in Manchester city centre? As existential questions go, this one has clearly been haunting Salford Friendly Anglers‘ co-founder Nick Carter for a while. But after surviving at least one close encounter with something of the Mancunian night (hint: it’s 18 stone and wears a […]
May 5 2012
Urban fly-fishing: 10 top rivers in FF&FT
Sixteen miles upriver from central Manchester, between the cricket ground and the carpet factory in Ramsbottom, the early-season Irwell surges with smooth, deceptive power. Raindrops splash into eddies along the banks, and a hatch of dark olives tacks across the leaden surface. Under those little grey sailboats, the trout I’ve just hooked on a dead-drifted […]
