Apart from refilling the aquifers and reservoirs, and triggering a national conversation about how we really want to manage our rivers, this winter’s record rainfall has had another tangible benefit… … providing Trout in the Town maestro Paul Gaskell with an opportunity to track the urban runoff patterns in his native Sheffield, ahead of the […]
Author Archive
March 29 2014
Pic of the day: Woody debris is so last season…
… For the edgy Trout in Dirty Places vibe, what you need is a small hatchback! With big thanks to Paul Shorrock aka SharkeyP for this instant-classic early season shot (not to mention great one-liner!) in a Fly Fishing Forums discussion of all the great work of the Wild Trout Trust… (Photo: Paul Shorrock)
March 19 2014
The Urbantrout Diaries: Wet weather in Wincanton
We’re delighted to announce that the fifth episode of The Urbantrout Diaries has just been published, this time featuring an exciting new Trout in the Town project in Somerset: Community Action to Transform the Cale Habitat (CATCH for short: never underestimate the value of a finely crafted acronym!) has enjoyed the same meteoric rise as […]
March 5 2014
The Wild Trout Trust charity auction 2014: Make this your year of urban exploration!
It’s hard to believe a whole year has rolled round since last year’s Wild Trout Trust auction… but here we are again, with another highly tempting selection of lots for would-be urban anglers. Whether you’re already a dyed-in-the-wool post-industrial fly-fisher, or you’ve recently discovered our dirty little secret and want to find out more, we’re […]
February 24 2014
Urbantrout sidecasts: Monday 24 February
Our first preview of Rochdale’s soon-to-be-daylighted River Roch (where the BBC also went urbexing to find their own angle) Rangeley-Wilson writes again: All the futures we have wished for the Buckinghamshire Wye A new urban river cleanup group forms in Sleaford: spot the value of social media… 150 volunteers in less than 3 months! Salford […]
February 17 2014
Film night: Saving the Lathkill
As regular readers of this blog will know, post-industrial rivers really do come in all shapes, sizes and conditions (and not all of them now as urban as you might think). To us, there’s no better proof of this maxim than the otherwise idyllic upper Lathkill, part of the headwaters of the mighty Trent. However […]
January 27 2014
Fish where you live: Science hints at the real health values of blue-green spaces in our towns and cities
New results from a 5-year research project carried out by the University of Exeter show that moving to greener spaces in towns and cities can have positive, lasting health benefits. From a summary in a property feature in last week’s Metro: The study traced 1,000 people living in British cities for 5 years and found […]
January 16 2014
Urban fly-fishing report: River Lambourn, Newbury
Urbantrout readers Simon Clarke and David Miller spent a sunny winter Saturday on RENEWAL‘s much-restored urban reaches of the River Lambourn in Newbury last weekend, and sent us a selection of photos via Simon’s Facebook page. Like most of the southern chalkstreams at present, the river was running fast and high from lots of recent […]
January 1 2014
Inspiration from the Kelvin (and a Happy New Year!)
Maybe it’s something in the water (or more probably the proximity of Glasgow’s ancient and world-famous School of Art) but the local graffiti on the Kelvin never fails to inspire us. Take the example above, which recently appeared on Alistair Stewart’s Urban Fly Fisher blog… or the ones below, which we found whilst fishing and […]
December 20 2013
Merry Christmas to all our readers!
As the great Brian Clarke once said, if there’s anything that can be picked up, carried and dropped, you’ll find it in the Wandle. And so it was that in the last moments of December’s Wandle Trust community river cleanup, our good friend (and fellow fishing writer) Jason Hill spotted something in the water… and […]
