I don’t often recommend peoples products, books or businesses – but having recently bought this book I’m going to make an exception to the rule. BUY THIS BOOK.
Heres the Foreword written by Charles Rangely Wilson.
“I’ve thought alot about why fishing for wild trout in a city should be so compelling. On one level there is the simple thrill of casting a line within sight of office blocks, planes overhead, trains rattling by: all that clatter and rush and you, the still point at its centre, turning in to a slower, deeper rhythm of water and wild spaces.
Fishing brings you to a different place in more ways than one and if you can get there on the way home or in the lunch hour, then the pleasure, for being stolen or endlessly surprising – and the sight of a brown trout rising to mayflies in a city stream really is surprising – will be so much richer. But underlying and resonating with this thrill is the wonder of finding something emblematic of wilderness in the midst of its very opposite. There is romance in that, in the thought that nature can overcome, or at the very least co-exist. And if one way of accessing that romance and the sense of hope that springs from within it is with a fishing rod in hand, wet waders sploshing along a busy high st, then why not?
As Theo’s fascinating, celebratory book reveals. rivers and fish lost to generations of anglers – the once-wild rivers on the fringes of cities that have now grown to engulf them and the stunning, fabled trout that held on in spite of that encroachment until finally they gave in to tides of filthy water – are there again, for the first time in a century or more. Clean rivers and wild trout in the city!
City fishing for wild trout is – as well as being left field, exotic on the doorstep, adventurous in the best sense, cheap and very cheerful – and a wonderful affirmation of hope, a declaration that nature can overcome and that we can build a world where there is room for both people and the wild.
Go to it.”
The book packed with information about 50 of our post-industrial rivers, giving a little local history, local contact info, information about ecological projects, the Wild Trout Trust and the Grayling Society.
Don’t expect a step by step guide to catching urban trout – this book gives lots and lots of info – but not the hard won type that puts fish in the net. What it does do – is give enough information to whet the appetite and make you want to get out, explore some of our less illustrious local streams and rivers for yourself.
We all know that fishing keeps the little boy inside each and everyone of us alive.
So go and live a bit – with the inspiration Theos book gives – which you can buy here
It gets a yes from me.
manchester fishing Irwell Ribble Trout