Readers of last year’s best-selling urban fly-fishing blockbuster may recall how impressed we were by the locally-tied flies of Tavistock fishing guide Tim James… … which we loved enough to pick up a generous handful from the counter of English Country Pursuits, the town’s huntin’, shootin’ and fishin’ shop. Some of these featured in chapter […]
Archive for the tag 'Trout in Dirty Places'
April 25 2013
Trout in the Classroom: Rewilding kids and rivers
This time last week, environmental writer-campaigner George Monbiot (personal mottos: Comfort the afflicted, afflict the comfortable and Unreconstructed idealist, professional troublemaker) visited south London’s River Wandle to watch the Wandle Trust’s Trout in the Classroom trout fry release by local urban schoolkids in Morden Hall Park. His feature about the project and its wider implications […]
April 7 2013
Urban fly-fishing report (angling celebrity edition): Frome and Nailsworth Stream, Stroud
Having just reviewed Trout in Dirty Places in glowing terms for Trout & Salmon magazine this time last year… … Wild Trout Trust vice-president and all-round great angling writer Jon Beer lost little time in grabbing his fishing gear (and his river restorationist fishing pal Vaughan Lewis) to head for urban-fishy water not too far […]
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 […]
October 5 2012
Urban river restoration: Restocking Yorkshire’s Colne
Here’s one we missed earlier: news of the latest very welcome stocking of 4,000 juvenile grayling into Yorkshire’s River Colne between Marsden and Milnsbridge. Readers of Trout in Dirty Places will probably remember that this is the stretch of the Colne which has been hit by an almost unbelievable sequence of pollution incidents in the […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
April 30 2012
Urbantrout sidecasts: Monday 30 April
Trout on the Tube: BBC Newsround’s report on this year’s Wandle Trust Trout in the Classroom releases, still playing on the CBBC web channel Trout in the Town: Full bios of all urban river restoration chapters, as part of the Wild Trout Trust’s long-awaited full-site reload Sheffield rivers run free: The Sheffield Star namechecks Paul Gaskell, […]
April 20 2012
Fly-fishing as urban exploration
(Photo: UK Urbex Forums) If you subscribe to the online-paywalled Sunday Times (which we don’t, preferring to go all retro-printy instead for one day a week), you may already have seen last weekend’s fascinating analysis of the now-not-so-underground concept of urban exploration. The gonzo challenge of exploring and documenting the forbidden spaces of decommissioned factories, […]
