Trout in the Town:

The Wild Trout Trust very gratefully benefited from the generous loan of Severn Rivers Trust's "Emriver" at this year's CLA gamefair. As well as proving to be a great way to engage game fair attendees of all ages, it provided a fantastic opportunity to accurately simulate many scenarios that we routinely encounter in our river habitat works. This first video introduces some of the basics - and shows the effect of two common habitat installation techniques: marginal brash and log flow-deflectors. There will be a series of short videos that follow this first introductory piece. Each subsequent film will look at specific scenarios and model their outcomes - which are often highly unexpected unless you have quite a lot of existing experience with geomorphology...

Met with Phil Williams last week to chat through the questions he had for me about the Trout in the Town project. Phil has now put his interview up on his website; and it is available to listen to below: http://www.fishingfilmsandfacts.co.uk/podcasts/F3/AudioAngling130.mp3

Shaun Leonard gave a huge amount of masterclass training over both days of the Urban Conclave - enabling attendees to benefit from just a small part of his extensive experience in decoding the secrets of the lives (and sometimes deaths) of fish just using visual examination of small samples under a microscope. Combining the Trout in the Town friendly competition monitoring methods with training in scale sampling (which does not harm the fish)provides anyone who cares about an urban (or rural!) river with a wonderful tool for understanding the fish populations in their river. For instance, the picture at the top of this blog entry gives a clue to why one of the most commonly-heard myths about taking large fish for the table is completely wrong... Just by way of explanation, the picture shows a trout scale under a microscope. The scale was taken from the fish (caught and released by the WTT's Gareth Pedley from the river Tweed) in the photograph below: Although they are ...

Another of the MANY great talks that the participants in the 2013 Urban River Champions Conclave benefited from was Professor Lerner's account of how the Aire Rivers Trust has set up the plan for the restoration of Bradford Beck. I felt that it was important to set up the whole Conclave by bracketing the subject of Resilience with two talks; the first of which was Phil Sheridan's deeply personal and incredibly inspirational dissection of the qualities of resilience that we encounter (and require) during each of our "lived experiences". The second key talk was very deliberately designed to expose the bare nuts and bolts of a highly structured series of practical solutions to many of the problems that Trout in the Town groups routinely encounter. In other words, the second talk offered one possible "route map" of how to turn the inspiration and personal resilience identified and instilled by Phil's talk into a series of effective an efficient actions. ...

Friends of Bradford Beck have taken a simple but profound step in replacing the series of signs that were first erected in the 1970s. The signs previously warned people to stay away from the dangerously polluted waters. Now that there have been significant strides made in improving water quality - these signs are misleading. They were just one more reason for local people to either overlook or actively avoid valuing and engaging with their local river corridor. Local newspaper coverage here: Telegraph and Argus

I'll sandwich this quick-fire montage that captures some of what went on at May's Urban Conclave weekend between Phil Sheridan's full presentation (blogged previously here: http://urbantrout.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/urban-conclave-if-youve-ever-felt.html )and a future blog post featuring Prof. David Lerner's excellent talk (video edit still on the "to do" list...). There were many more fantastic talks that I was unable to video unfortunately (and I only chose to film the presentations by people who I absolutely knew wouldn't be fazed by the camera pointed at them!) The video embedded below documents the meeting of around 25 core members who run Urban River restoration projects from around the UK including: Wales (Rivers Taff and Ogmore), Salford, Sheffield, Newbury, Burnley, London, Huddersfield, Bradford, Keighley and Wigan. It was an honour to host them all and to hear all of their reports, stories, trials and tribulations. I also believe that the w...

Just as we are getting to a point that we can start to move onto the first steps on agreeing some in-channel habitat improvements; the recovering River Erewash reminds us of the potential that the local River Erewash Foundation is fighting for with the support of the Wild Trout Trust's Trout in the Town project. Well done to all at REF for continuing to fight the good fight. :) :) http://derbyshireonthefly.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/payment-in-kind.html