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, […]
Archive for the tag 'Urban river restoration'
July 30 2012
Urbantrout sidecasts: London Olympics edition
From the source of the Thames in a green and pleasant land to dark satanic mills, the forging of the Five Rings and the invention of the www that enables blogs like this, Danny Boyle’s awe-inspiring “Isles of Wonder” charts the transformation of Britain by the world’s first Industrial Revolution (But… did someone forget to […]
July 20 2012
Film night: Urban river habitat improvement
For several years the Wild Trout Trust has been working closely with the Wandle Trust to improve habitat for trout and other species on South London’s most famous urban chalkstream. In this excellent little case study video, filmed last autumn by Fish On Productions, Trout in the Town programme manager Paul Gaskell (yes, it’s that […]
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 6 2012
Breaking news: Thames Water’s £400k for the Crane
It’s been months in the making… but finally comes news of a breakthrough in the negotiations on north west London’s River Crane. As this Thames Anglers’ Conservancy report reminds us, the river suffered a catastrophic sewage spill at the end of October last year when a 6-tonne penstock jammed in Thames Water’s main sewage pipe […]
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 […]
May 1 2012
Trout in the Town: Eat Sleep Fish tells the back story
If you’ve ever wondered in an idle moment how the UK’s urban river restoration movement really got started, this freshly-minted cometh-the-hour-cometh-the-man interview with the Wild Trout Trust’s Trout in the Town project manager Paul Gaskell will probably tell you all you need to know. (Fair warning: as I’ve just suggested in this cross-post over on […]
April 11 2012
Wood and water: LWD on the BBC
Woody debris on the radio… who knew the tools of river restoration geekdom could get so publicly funky? Following Good Friday’s post-industrial fly-fishing extravaganza on the Wandle, another programme took to the airwaves yesterday morning: this time exploring the role of large and coarse woody debris in renaturalising river systems both rural and urban. Clearly, as Angela […]
March 28 2012
Film night: The case against micro hydro
Via the Waterfeature blog (tagline: giving a dam about micro hydro) and this thread on the Fly Forums comes a highly informative film, including interviews with experts Paul Gaskell, Chris Firth and David Buttle, warning about the harmful effects of the new wave of micro hydro schemes on rivers like Sheffield’s Don. Kelham Island Hydro […]
March 21 2012
Rebuilding a river: The Wandle in Carshalton
Whenever somebody asks me what’s the best example of urban river restoration you know? I always tell them about the upper Wandle. Right across the road from my own front door, the ancient weir at Butter Hill Mill has probably impounded this stretch of chalkstream for at least 700 years. By the nineteenth century, a complex […]
