Trout in the Town:

Just back from a swift trip to Glasgow/Lennoxtown and the guys at Campsie. Here is a fantastic river and a great group, which historically had amazing trout fishing. A cumulative effect of changes (probably land use, possibly climate, probably high water abstraction rates) often leave this river very low on water. Conversely, when it does rise; it comes up quick and drops away just as suddenly. A very common scenario in our upland river systems that comes along with intensified pressures on land use/natural resources. Sections of the river have been historically straightened and house continuous runs of relatively uniform depth (OK for juveniles, not so much holding water for adult fish). However, there are a few examples of naturally occurring Large Woody Debris which are providing holding lies for good fish. Unfortunately, this also means that these spots see lots of angling attention Trout in the Town and the guys from Campsie are putting some plans together in order to improve the ...

A quick one to make up for the lack of posts recently (I have been furiously drafting the upcoming "Urban river restoration guidelines" manual for publication this summer......) This one is about weirs (again - see "weirs tha bin?" previous blog post) I've lost count of the number of times that angling club members have been scared to death by the suggestion that a weir is taken down - Understandably - because often the foot of that weir (and the attendant scour hole) forms a weir pool that has the best fishing on that section of river... Thanks so, so much to Theo and the Wandle piscators/Wandle Trust for having the faith in our advice - it is by weir lowering or removal that the single good fishing spot BELOW a weir can be transformed into tens (hundreds?) of good fishing spots above the weir! All of that current velocity that is killed behind the structure (causing silt to gather) is re-invigorated throughout the whole reach. This will clear away the silt, ex...