News

A new website has been launched with very comprehensive coverage of where to fish in Wales.

Wales is justly famous for its sea trout (locally called sewin) fishing on iconic rivers such as the Towy and Teifi, but it also has some excellent wild trout fishing for resident brownies in rivers, reservoirs and in the hundreds of mountain lakes (llyns).

The website uses intuitive interactive maps to enable you to find fishing and angling facilities in Wales quickly and easily. There is also information on where to stay at Visit Wales graded accommodation, where to purchase fishing tackle from local shops and where to hire a fishing guide or a charter boat skipper.The website will be regularly updated with quality written blog posts - some blogs written by staff and members of the WTT will be appearing over the coming months.

Duncan Pepper's blog post gives an interesting perspective on beavers and angling. Duncan guides on the Tay (amongst other places in Scotland) where beavers are, well .... problematic for some farmers.Visit the WTT website library page on beavers (and predators - which beavers are not!) for a review of the science on beaver-trout interactions and other useful links on beaver ecology and management.

Delivery of a cracking little project at Rectory Farm is a result of a partnership between the landowners, George and Ann Eaton, the Wild Trout Trust and the Environment Agency. Following two devastating pollution events in 2017 and 2018, the local community were keen to see the river brought back to health. Simply re-stocking the river is rarely the right approach, so a programme of habitat improvement work was agreed to restore the river from the ‘bottom-up’. It is anticipated that existing wild trout populations above the source of the pollutions will recolonise the area, taking advantage of the habitat improvements.

Six gravel riffles were created in autumn 2019 to provide new spawning habitat from brown trout, chub, dace and minnow. Bank re-grading work was set to follow but the floods of winter 2019-20 prevented river access. Spring came and the ground dried out, but then COVID19 restrictions prevented any work. The relaxing of movement restrictions allowed a small but effective delivery team coordinated by Rob Mungovan to complete the work in June 2020. The photos below tell some of the story…

WTT Conservation Officer, Rob Mungovan, just back from furlough, has got straight to work restoring a reach of a little river close to his heart.

Many of us already spend time battling against other non-native invaders like signal crayfish and various alien plants. So, with the Asian hornet in the news again as a threat to our honey bee, we thought a quick swat-up might be appropriate for interested WTT supporters.

We’re a month into WTT’s plan for dealing with the Covid crisis. Here’s an update…

Seven WTT members of staff remain on furlough: Denise Ashton, Paul Gaskell, Jonny Grey, Nick Lawrence, Rob Mungovan, Gareth Pedley and Theo Pike. Five of us remain on the bridge steering WTT, some on reduced hours and/or salary (in one case, sacrificing salary entirely). Just to remind you, we’re furloughing this extraordinary group of people in line with Government’s Stay at Home message, meaning we are unable to get out to do our advisory and practical work, much of it requiring travel and close 1:1 work, certainly where we’re working in the river with groups of volunteers. Furloughing people gives us the opportunity to return to our funded projects when movement restrictions ease, though obviously the people we work with have to be keen too to restart those projects when the time is right.

We are cost saving wherever we reasonably can. For example, we’ve deferred a full print run of our annual journal, Salmo Trutta. We’d planned our annual Get Together on the Usk for September 12 & 13, but that is in abeyance for now. We’re investigating the practicalities of a remote Get Together, where you could still hear from some of our guest speakers, such as Paul Procter, Jon Beer and Tony Bostock.

We have added a page about rainbow trout to the website under the ‘About Trout’ menu.

Rainbow trout are not native to the UK, but for many people they are the first (and perhaps only) trout that they catch. We hope you find it interesting.

There are also pages on brown trout, sea trout, ferox trout, grayling and arctic charr under the ‘About Trout’ menu. Plus 100 (or more) facts about trout.