Thanks to lots of enthusiasm from local volunteers, Somerset’s urban rivers now have a new cohort of qualified riverfly monitors to look after them. Click through to this report on the Wild Trout Trust website to find out more, and how to get involved in the exciting new TWIST (Transforming Waterways In Somerset Towns) project…
Archive for the tag 'People'
February 10 2021
Pic of the day: Throwback to the Calder
While our longer-range urban destination fishing is still off the cards (and most of our rivers have recently been blown out by rain and snowmelt anyway) … … here’s a little throwback to fishing the urban Calder in West Yorkshire with the Trout in Dirty Places crew in the freezing winter of 2010. Now that […]
February 20 2019
Film night: Longinoja, from gutter to creek
Among European river menders, the restoration of Longinoja brook has become a textbook example of local activism persuading local communities and public bodies alike to start valuing a little urban stream again. Flowing through the Finnish city of Helsinki, this important sea-trout spawning tributary of the Vantaanjoki River was historically dredged and otherwise modified […]
April 17 2018
In the Telegraph: River guardians of the Tame
I’m knee-deep in the river Tame in Stalybridge, 15 miles east of Manchester. Beside me is Woz Andrew, a local fly-fishing guide. After climbing down a flight of stone steps from road level – hollowed by a century of boots and a remnant of this river’s industrial past – we have made our way slowly […]
February 20 2018
Film night: Glen Pointon takes us to the hell-hole
It’s interesting to see how the idea of vlogging has come back round the loop again: maybe it never quite went away, but we’re sure there was some kind of hiatus between the old-skool DSLR / point-and-shoot cameras, and the new wave of smartphone streaming, Instagram stories and, well, you get the picture… Anyway, vlogging […]
November 20 2017
Trout & Salmon: Jon Beer fishes Holmfirth
Here at Urbantrout, it’s a constant low-level source of entertainment to watch how different angling writers react to the ambiguous challenge of our urban rivers. One or two usually-intrepid international explorers have proved weirdly squeamish (no names, no pack drill!) – while other less obviously gung-ho personalities are clearly super-keen to get stuck into Dirty […]
August 25 2017
Film night: Riverfly monitoring (and much more) on Sheffield’s prize-winning Porter Brook
So, this film is already showing on the Wild Trout Trust’s Trout in the Town site, but we reckon it’s so important that we want to mirror it here too. Mending urban and rural rivers alike is all about restarting natural processes, as well as making sure that improvements are bedding in properly. And the […]
August 3 2017
Pic of the day: From Wincanton to the Wandle
Sharing the urban river love is what Urbantrout and Trout in the Town are all about… … and we know from long experience that there’s no better way to do it than supporting each others’ volunteer events. A case in point: CATCH chair Gary Hunt recently took a day trip from Somerset to south London, […]
May 26 2017
Pic of the day: Fun in the sun, cleaning up the Frome
It’s fair to say that this photo caused a bit of unexpected kerfuffle when it appeared on Facebook a few days ago (Can you or can’t you legally pull shopping trolleys and other rubbish out of your local river? The authoritative answer: Yes, you can!) We also say: Kudos to Dan, Simon and Richard and […]
May 3 2017
Film night: Pollution hits the Irwell (again)
It’s a sickening experience to see your local river destroyed by pollution, but with the best will in the world there’s nothing very much for outside observers to say or do except sympathise deeply, offer any support that’s needed, and thank their lucky stars that it wasn’t their river… this time. That’s why we’ve been […]
