Trout in the Town:

Thanks to great ideas from Martin Kowalski and Danny Gill, SPRITE have now had some handy guidance cards printed up (cheers to Nick James for printing and laminating!) to help reduce the avoidable mortality of fish (particularly grayling) due to poor practice. The guidance cards come with a free disgorger and free packet of hooks on a cord so that all three are to hand when needed. This way, SPRITE members can hand the kits out free on the bank to help anglers in a friendly way and get away from the avoidable losses of all fish from the river. The cards are double sided and cover everything from handling, making sure to return trout (both unfit to eat and also not sustainable to remove wild fish), what to do if a bait is taken deeply and also E.A. phone numbers.

Can "run of river" low head hydropower offset the environmental costs of installation, operation and maintenance? Are investors likely to see a return? Is such an investment beneficial or detrimental to the environment? New video here and website link to further info below: http://waterfeature1.blogspot.com/

Check it out here: http://www.sheffieldsprite.com Please note the Calendar function in the "Events" pages that will keep everyone up to date with upcoming cool stuff. Also note our exciting plans for a new initiative using simplified fly-fishing (Japanese Tenkara) to engage kids and adults with the conservation of their local urban rivers. We will be piloting this in Sheffield and then helping other groups to set up their own projects. Finally, although it is not yet "live" there will be a Donate button so that people who would like to help to protect and restore the urban Don (but who find it difficult to attend working parties) can make discretionary contributions via Paypal. Enjoy and please feel free to comment via p.gaskell8@googlemail.com

Massive thanks to all the volunteers who put themselves forward in some difficult times for myself and, potentially, the group. Here is a short video put together from the few clips I've taken over two recent working parties (when I've remembered my camera!). Of course there have been many more events, and please see my older blog entries for some of these. The raw materials for works towards specific conservation objectives were paid for, in the main, by a grant that the WTT successfully won from the Esmee Fairbairn foundation. Extra special thanks to the volunteers who just put themselves forward to find out what needed to be done to tackle our challenges; a few that stand out are Danny G, Paul H, Roger R, Nick J, Gerry C, Steve W, Simon F, Richard C, Dave W, Kate Q, Craig O, Gareth E - As well as the general supporting membership! Big thanks to those businesses that have taken a hit in order to put something back in to the river that they value so highly: Paul Hughes/Greentr...

I'm using this as a dry run of embedding "Vimeo" clips...but here is a reminder where the Sheffield branch of Trout in the Town came from.

As regular readers will know, there is a long-running collaboration between the Wild Trout Trust (most recently via the Trout in the Town project) and the Wandle Trust. This September I had the honour of doing some further consultancy on how best to carry out parts of their ongoing in-stream habitat restoration project. The programme of in-channel works on the Carshalton arm was initiated as part of the WTT Practical visit in February 2011 and is also part of the overall strategy for this section of the river. The strategy was driven by the findings of numerous site visits technical guidance documents that the WTT prepared for the Wandle Trust for use in negotiations with the local Environment Agency representatives. Through this process the E.A. and the Wandle Trust were able to lower/remove a number of weirs as well as to fit a fish pass to a weir that could not be removed. The fish pass and its installation were generously paid for and carried out by the Environment Agency. The stra...

I had a really lovely trip up to East Lancashire to meet with Graham Counsell (who had kindly sourced some very useful pieces of metalwork for driving rebar pins into submerged logs; thanks Graham). We took the opportunity to fish up along the section of river that the Trout in the Town branch run out of Colne Water Angling Club have been restoring and protecting over the last few years Colne Habitat restoration video . I am really glad that I did because we were privileged to encounter a large number of super-healthy, totally wild brownies from tight up against the superb overhead cover provided by the log and brash bank revetments. These soft revetments are structures that the club have installed to slow the "too rapid" rate of erosion in grazed sections of their river. The brashy margins have re-vegetated really well, providing additional bugs for the trout to feed on. Not only that, the trout have a plethora of new and very secure lies beneath the bankside logs and shaggy...