Skip to main content

SPRITE Winter events

Hi everyone,

I have a few dates for your diaries for some of the SPRITE winter work schedule.

2nd Oct 2011– wild flower and grass seeding

This is a really important job for a number of reasons. The root structure of grasses and plants stabilises soil banks reducing erosion, so preventing silt entering the water course. It also greatly increases diversity of the riparian habitat which will have a knock on benefit for all flora and fauna. I particularly want to try some seeding in the areas where the EA has previously stem injected the Japanese Knotweed. These bankside areas may well be vulnerable to winter floods, so it is vital that we stabilise these areas.

Meet 9.30 – 12.30 by the Farfield Hotel, town end of Club Mill Roa.


30th Oct – general litter pick,

The first of this winter's litter clean ups.

PLEASE NOTE CHANGE OF VENUE NOW Meet 9.30 – 12.30 AT LIVESEY STREET BRIDGE.



27th Nov – bird & bat box painting and installation

We still have a number of bird and bat boxes constructed and donated by Middlewood School. After the last attempt where most of the boxes were vandalised, we need to be a bit more canny about where we site the boxes. A bit of camouflage painting (with water based paints of course) should help.

Meet 9.30 – 12.30 Livesey Street bridge

4th December - Planned friendly fly angling match: details to be finalised and information from p.gaskell8@googlemail.com


11th Dec – litter pick, site to be finalised

If you are on the river and see an area that is in need of our attention, please don’t hesitate to contact me and we will endeavour to sort it out.

In all cases, tea / coffee / refreshments will be provided. As always, some of us will be fishing afterwards so for those members that are unfamiliar with the river, or are new to fly fishing, you are more then welcome to join us for the afternoon. If you haven’t attended one of our working sessions before, what better way in. Help out with our valuable habitat improvement work, and learn a bit about the river and fly fishing, all in the best of company, of course.

I look forward to seeing you all on 2nd Oct.


Cheers SPRITE (Sheffield's "Trout in the Town" project)

Comments

Unknown said…
What a nice blog with a different theme,will follow, thanks.

www.smallstreambrowntroutfishing.blogspot.com Have a look and follow if you get time?

Best Wishes.

Popular posts from this blog

Why Presume to Remove Weirs? (with River Dove Case Study)

Weirs and the Backwards Ways that Rivers Work One of my favourite sayings on river restoration is a mangled quote from a movie "... boxing is an unnatural act. Everything in boxing is backwards: sometimes the best way to deliver a punch is to step backwards...but step back too far and you ain't fighting at all ". So my mangled version starts out "Everything in rivers is backwards...". Basically, I never seem to run out of new examples of "what SEEMS to happen in a river is actually the complete opposite of what really happens". The rest of this article looks at many of the "backwards" things about weirs and rivers - and finishes off with a real-world case-study that is playing out right now on the River Dove . One spoiler alert is that, from an ecological point of view, it is almost always safe to assume that: The best biological outcome for a river is the removal of some or all of an artificial weir.  Now, I don't exp...

Triumphant Urban river Conclave

Along with generously contributed sponsorship from the Environment Agency, the WTT’s “Trout in the Town” project sponsored and hosted a fantastic conference over the weekend of 1st and 2nd August 2009. Participants and presenters gathered from across the UK in order to: • Share innovative approaches between practitioners • Receive and provide expert technical and practical guidance • Foster support and networking between projects • Generate and spread “Best Practice” for urban river conservation Most participants arrived on the Friday night and took advantage of the conference venue accommodation. This allowed for one or two well-earned drinks at the end of the “normal working week”. Little did they know the rigours awaiting them over the next two days. Proceedings were kicked off on Saturday morning by Stuart Crofts’ inspirational account of the battle for South Yorkshire’s River Don, fought since the 1970’s by himself and several other key figures including Chris Firth and Gerald Sto...

Return of the Urban Conclave - even bigger and better than the original?

Friday February 25th through to Monday the 28th saw a massive payoff for over 2 years' worth of planning, design proposals, negotiation and persistance (not only on my part, but on the part of the Wandle Trust - in particular Bella Davies and Theo Pike). Members of the local E.A. fisheries team (including Tanya Houston) also pushed forward the important removal of several barriers to trout migration - which will soon see a fish pass added to a large weir to complement the lowering/removal of 3 other weirs. Finally, we had the go ahead to begin the creation of good quality spawning, juvenile and adult trout habitat patches in the upper reaches of the Carshalton arm of the River Wandle: the next step in returning truly wild self-sustaining trout populations since their demise in the polluted waters of the 1930s. Whilst seeking to arrange this year's "Trout in the Town Urban River Champion's Conclave" , the thought occurred that it would be incredibly fitting to sh...