WTT Blog

Most of our supporters know trout don’t just live in obvious or even beautiful places… but it’s sometimes hard to work out what that really means.

Hidden in the pages of our catalogue, here’s our curated selection of trout fishing in some of the most unexpected places in England. For instance, who’d have thought that Andrew Flitcroft, editor of Trout & Salmon, could take you on a wild trout adventure in Rutland? Or that wild trout are living happily in the Great Stour just outside Ashford in Kent?Time to start planning your season of adventures, inspired by the WTT's auction. 8-17 March, on eBay and by post. Click the Lot numbers below for a direct link the Lot description and thence to eBay.

Dove, Derwent, Wye… if you fish Derbyshire’s superb limestone rivers, you may already rate them even more highly than the southern chalk streams. And if you haven’t fished them yet – well, let’s just say you’ve got a treat in store.

With epic fly hatches and clear, tumbling currents that can be kind even to inexperienced anglers, these waters offer endless possibilities for fishing adventures – not to mention a chance to catch one of the Wye’s unique wild rainbows. We think a long weekend in the Peak District beckons…

Anglers travel from all over the world to fish England’s chalk streams – and with very good reason. But there are some beats, especially on the celebrated Test and Itchen, where even the best guides and booking services can’t get access.

The Wild Trout Trust is immensely grateful to the owners of some of these beats for making them available for our charity auction, the single most important fundraising event of our year. We’re very privileged to be able to offer them as auction lots for one-off adventures that money truly can’t buy.

Roaming the hills in search of wild trout is one of the quintessential adventures of any fishing season – and this year’s Wild Trout Trust Auction brings you a wide choice of chances to explore lochs, llyns and tarns all over Britain’s uplands.

Take your pick from Lyn Gwiddior or a mountain lake near Bala, tarns in England’s Lake District, or even Assynt’s primordial landscapes in the far north of Scotland – and start getting fit for a summer of long but satisfying hikes!

North Norfolk is still a mystery to many. But so many great anglers live there… that in the end we can’t believe it’s all completely coincidental.

From a unique three river chalk stream safari with Nick Zoll, to a day of adventures in the headwaters of the Wensum with author Terry Lawton, here’s your chance to explore those coincidences and start planning even more time on the water in one of England’s most secretive counties…

Climate change and intensification of land-use are causing fundamental shifts in the ecology of northern lakes with potentially dire consequences for the species they contain and the human populations which depend on them

Back in 2016, WTT was one of the organisations to be awarded funding from Yorkshire Water’s Biodiversity Enhancement Fund as part of their Blueprint for Yorkshire. The idea was to organise a series of workshops around aspects of habitat improvement and tailored to issues found at specific sites, and any angling organisation across Yorkshire could register an interest in hosting one.

Three years downstream and it is possible to reflect on what has been achieved.

From Shaun Leonard, WTT Director:

It’s a year when we…

In a recent monthly staff update, Gareth Pedley shared his experience of rethinking and redesigning a relatively cheap (but hopefully incredibly cheerful) fish passage solution at a challenging structure.

The importance of fish passage on small watercourses is often overlooked, despite a wealth of electrofishing survey data and scientific literature to demonstrate their importance as salmonid spawning and juvenile nursery areas. Making obstructions passable....

Andy Thomas, WTT Conservation Officer for the South East shares some insights on chalkstream carriers: 

Although not exclusive to chalkstreams, man-made distributaries, loops or carriers pose many fishery owners and managers with difficult challenges, particularly when the flow into their particular system is controlled by a top-end hatch or weir. These challenges can be much more problematic when said hatch is owned by a third party.  If your club is lucky enough to have rights over the main channel, as well as the carrier, then great, but many do not and it’s always a surprise to me that so much harmony exits, particularly in the chalk stream valleys, where water is often split between two, three or even more parallel channels.

Gareth Pedley describes a workshop carried out with volunteers from the Culdaff River Community Angling Club, the Inishowen Rivers Trust and the Loughs Agency to learn about techniques for tackling excessive bank erosion - and does some valuable work too!

A photo of one small patch of river bed on a headwater stream of the River Test encapsulates why the sorting of river bed material is so important.

A WTT advisory visit in 2016 on behalf of Birdsgrove Fly Fishing Club (BFFC) to the River Dove, Derbyshire, identified seven weirs along the 5km length of river fished by the club. The impoundment of water by these structures is detrimental to river habitat, fly and fish populations,especially from a fish passage persepctive, and natural sediment transport. The advisory visit report stimulated a debate within the club about what could be done to improve the fishery and it was decided to work towards the removal of the two weirs that had been built by the club in the past.