News

The Wild Trout Trust has published its Report and Accounts for the last financial year - click here to download.

On 31 July 2015, the Trust became an incorporated charity, hence these accounts cover a 15 month period rather than the usual 12 months.  

The accounts for periods prior to July 2015 are available on the Charity Commission website.

As you may recall, the time of our Research & Conservation Officer, Jonny Grey, is split (in our favour!) between the muck and bullets of practical river habitat restoration and the ivory towers of academia within the Lancaster Environment Centre at Lancaster University.

In a concerted effort to find some sort of halfway house, Jonny has recently devised a PhD project which will draw upon his expertise in stable isotopes (see the article he wrote for us in Salmo trutta a few years back), use them to characterise the structure of food webs, and test their use as a measure of habitat restoration ‘success’. Everyone (from an early age) learns about the concept of the food web so he is hoping that it will be a useful engagement and educational tool.

Jonny has teamed up with good WTT friends at the Ribble Rivers Trust who will co-supervise and support the student, provide the restoration sites to be considered, and who are interested in this approach as a tool to better convey an understanding and the value of restoration work via their ambitious project, Ribble Life.

The Rivers & Wetlands Community Days programme aims to get volunteers working in and by our rivers and wetlands within the Thames Water catchment to make life better for their wildlife and the people that enjoy those places.

Up to £5000 per project is available through WTT's Rivers & Wetlands Community Days 2016, supported by Thames Water.

The deadline for applications is 29/2/16. Click here for the application form and process documents.

The December 2015 edition of  Trout and Salmon magazine had a double page spread of suggestions from the Wild Trout Trust on ‘How to Improve Your River’.

That article is now available as a PDF – click here to view and download.

Click here for links to relevant material on the website associated with the various topics. 

We have compiled this list of clubs, syndicates and private fisheries to assist our supporters who may be looking for new waters to fish in 2017.

The list will be held on the ‘Wild Trout Fishing’ page of this website, and updated as new clubs ask to add their details.

If you would like your club to be added, please contact dashton@wildtrout.org.

There are lots of items of interest in the latest Riverfly Partnership Newsletter 

The Atlantic Salmon Trust and River Dee Trust are organising a seminar on Lower River and Inshore Tracking.

The seminar will include a series of presentations on current and planned acoustic tracking programmes and new technological developments. Work from both sides of the North Atlantic will be featured and a plenary session will help bring together all the different work streams that are being progressed.

The seminar will be held on Deeside on Friday 12th February. This is a brief email to suggest that you save the date and send a note of interest to Lorraine Hawkins - Lorraine Hawkins Lorraine@riverdee.org-  if you are considering attending. Full details of the seminar will be sent out in the New Year and you will be invited to book a place on the seminar. 

This newsletter from the two Environment Agency Fisheries, Biodiversity and Geomorphology Teams that cover most of East and West Sussex, Hampshire and the Isle of Wight has lots of items of interest, including summaries of a number of projects delivered with the Wild Trout Trust and other partners.More topics of interest include s salmon parr in the Ems and actions to protect sea trout from nets in the sea and river mouths. 

This years annual raffle has been very successful and raised £5791.

Thank you to Sage, The Peacock at Rowsley & Haddon Fisheries, Orvis, Snowbee and Phoenix Lines for donating the prizes and to everyone who bought tickets. Your support is very much appreciated.

1st Prize (ticket 8124) Mr C Mason, Nottinghamshire

2nd Prize (ticket 1249) Mr J Paxman, Oxfordshire

3rd Prize (ticket 777) Mr E Kramer, Hertfordshire

4th Prize (ticket 8429) Mr C Mason, Nottinghamshire

5th Prize (ticket 625) Mr N Mills, Oxfordshire

Prof Ken Whelan, Research Director at the Atlantic Salmon Trust and Adjunct Professor at University College Dublin recently gave an outstanding online seminar (a "webinar") for the Atlantic Salmon Conservation Foundation.

It's a brilliant story of the adaptability and variety of trout (in appearance and behaviour) and the likely importance of small coastal streams for our sea trout populations. You'll trip around the world, visiting places where trout are native or where we've taken them, then marvelled at their response in the wild: Ireland, the UK, Chile, the Falklands and even the Kerguelen Islands in the Indian Ocean.

You will need over 50 minutes for the full seminar, but it's a fascinating listen and watch. Scroll down the page to 'The hidden importance of small coastal streams'.

Tony Carter, aged 89, died in November.

Tony was a great friend to the Monnow and was part of the original “Gang of Four” (+ Ian Lindsay, Robert Denny & Patrick Lloyd) that designed and implemented the ground-breaking River Monnow Project.

He represented the S&TA on the RMP committee and his tireless work as treasurer over the three year duration of this massive project was vital when dealing with the convoluted rules and regulations imposed by DEFRA.  His efforts alone represented some 20% of the match funding required.

That same group rented several of the Monnow tributary beats together prior to releasing them to the Passport scheme. With his often antiquated equipment, Tony usually caught the largest trout!

He also served as a trustee of the Wye & Usk Foundation and was a founding member of the WTT.

Ian Machin who died this year, aged 80, was a long standing member and supporter of the WTT having joined in 2003. He was passionate about the welfare of wildlife and trout and salmon in particular. Ian will be greatly missed by his wife Lesley and their family, and all his fishing friends.

Sea trout and resident brown trout will be migrating upstream to spawn now. On some rivers they are already starting to spawn, on others they may spawn anytime between now and mid-January.  If you are in the right place at the right time, large sea trout can be very visible (and noisy!) as they start to pair up and cut redds in shallow water. In deeper water, you can see a bow wave if a large fish moves quickly.

This excellent video shows sea trout on their upstream migration on river in north Wales. 

See our information pages about sea trout and the trout lifecycle. 

The latest Environment Agency Trout & Grayling Newsletter of autumn 2015 highlights some of the projects where we have been working together. Many of the WTT projects mentioned in the newsletter are funded with revenue from Rod Licence sales, and reflect the fact that we have a strong working relationship with the EA and deliver good value for money.

We partner with landowners, fishing clubs, community groups and other charities as well as the EA, working to do the best for our trout, their rivers and the people that enjoy this magical fish and the places it lives.