On the back of some exceptional river habitat rehabilitation work carried out on various urban rivers across the country by initiatives such as ‘Trout in the Town’ I was wondering if something similar could be employed on one of the local rivers in Birmingham.

Previous reports on this forum suggest the River Cole as a prime example of a river in need of some care – full of litter but promisingly, clean gravel and trout too. I have also heard positive reports of the improving health of the River Rea.

It’s fantastic that trout are making a comeback in these rivers after decades of human mismanagement - but having said that, a lot more can be done to clear up the mess humans have made (and continue to make).

If anyone is interested in getting together to discuss the River Cole or possibly the River Rea and the work that can be done to improve these rivers, please get in touch. Perhaps we can set up a few litter removal working parties at first before possibly establishing a fishing and conservation group with a view to ‘Trout in the Town’ river habitat improvement works.

It will be good to hear from anyone with first hand experience of these rivers and whether a project of this nature is viable, already happening or, worst case scenario, a waste of time for whatever reason.

Many thanks, and I hope to hear from some of the Brummies on here!

As ever, I am available to support these efforts. We are currently looking at running another "urban river restoration" invitational conclave for existing and new Trout in the Town projects.

Also free advisory and practical visits are available for the river habitat side of things and keep your eyes peeled for the new "urban river restoration guidelines" manual that we will be publishing in the very near future (slated for first week in December).

The manual (like the upland rivers and Chalkstream rivers habitat manuals) will be available for free download (compressed) as well as for purchase on CD (in hi-res version).

---------- Post added at 05:51 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:47 PM ----------

Plus - see how you can take a project from two people and the first working party here:


To a fully fledged conservation group and free membership angling club (I'm going to one of their social's tonight) which has recently hosted the top FISH ON productions team who filmed their brand new Urban flyfishing double disk DVD on a combination of the SPRITE (Sheffield Trout in the Town) water and the section just upstream of there on the same river.

Fish On Productions - urban fly fishing


Pretty good going (and this is just one of 8 national projects) for a bunch of mates having a laugh and doing a bit of cleaning and PR for their local urban stream....

I woulD be more than Happy To get involved, T

Paul - great video and I hope we can achieve something similar in Birmingham. Thanks for your support, it's great to know we can tap in to your experience in these projects and make a difference to our local river environment. Much appreciated!

I'm happy to say that within a few hours our local volunteer list numbers 4 people! I will be in touch with you all soon to see if we can arrange something. If anyone else is interested feel free to drop me a PM or respond to this thread.

Justin

Brilliant effort guys - I heard about a similar thing in Basingstoke a year or two agao...is this part of the saem project going forward?

I just hope the Eastern Europeans don't just say "thank you very much" and worm them out. They are everywhere else. Not a reason to not do it, just a worry for all your hard work, thats all.

Hi all, i know the upper river Cole quite well,and it is a joy to see the river improving year on year. However there are areas which are major dumping grounds, mostly where the roads run close to the river,very similar to the video Paul posted. So a major polution sadly is always on the cards.
There really is no areas of the upper Cole suitable for fly fishing as it is so small, it is mostly fished by youngsters with bait. I dont know about lower down the river.
There are Trout here, and i have caught a couple on the fly,but its just been a bit of fun really as 95% of this end of the river its imposible to fly fish.
There are a lot of other fish here too, Roach,Perch,Chub,Dace and some Carp in the deeper holes,mostly from the surounding lakes after flooding.
It would be good to meet others interested in the river,and hopefully clean it up a bit.

Steve

Looking forward to the guided tour guys. Best to book me in before Xmas as my g/f is due on 27th Dec.

Also, this could give us chance to track down where the spawning is going on at the moment.

Fantastic, our group now numbers 6. A very good start.

From speaking to the local EA man earlier this year, I understand that the Cole definitely does hold trout (it's a surprisingly high quality gravelly catchment while the Rea is much siltier).

Unfortunately, I also understand that most of its course seems to run through the Shire Country Park where the Council formally doesn't allow fishing.

However, if some you local forum lads could put together a TiTT project on this river that's loudly based on conservation rather than fishing interests... I reckon you could go a long way to convincing sceptical conservation-industry types that we're not all in it just to improve our own fishing... there's a greater good here

Theo

PS: unless I'm completely wrong about the no-fishing rule, in which case I'll be up there in Tolkein-land at the start of next season faster than Gollum spotting the Precious...

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Mothers side of the family farmed 2 feilds at Maxstoke ,just above Coleshill ,this was 50s through till recently .
Those 2 feilds backed onto the Cole ,it was where I saw my first ever brown .
the river up there is a sad slow running ditch in need of stopping abstraction ,narrowing .
this is a ten year ago point of view ,they gave up that bit of land then !

Would be great to see it back on form,never caught a trout but a few roach,dace and the odd plug caught pike !
If memory serves ,slightly higher up stream there was a syndicate run by one of the Birmingham Gun/tackle dealers.Probably where my brown came from

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Andy Wren
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Claret not just a great dubbing colour!