Total Flyfisher Magazine

The New Year has bought great news for one of the south east’s most historically abused rivers.

Described just a few decades ago as an ‘open sewer’, over the last decade the river Wandle has seen significant restoration work carried out, thanks mainly to the efforts of charity group The Wandle Trust.

Including work to weirs, improvements of spawning beds, fish passes and flow modifications, the effort to bring the river back to life and increase stocks of wild trout appear to have already had a significant impact in 2012.

Already signs of spawning trout have been seen. And as well as actual trout having been witnessed spawning along the Carshalton arm of the Wandle, several redds (the areas of gravel that trout create to spawn in) have also been seen.

It’s great news for the waterway, and evidence which The Wandle Trust’s Chairman of Trustees and fly angler Theo Pike thinks could indicate 2012 will be a significant year for wild trout spawning.

“There have been trout spawning in the Wandle over the past few years as we have seen fry, but only in very small numbers,” he told Total Flyfisher. “After taking advice from The Wild Trout Trust and the Environment Agency, last summer we did a large amount of work on the river, especially around the Carshalton area. This included introducing some 50 tons of gravel into the river, working on two different weirs that were significant obstacles to migrating fish and installing flow deflectors to give the fish optimum spawning conditions.

“It’s great news that already the work seems to be paying off. There are around four times the number of redds in the river than previous years, meaning that 2012 could be the most significant spawning season for trout on the Wandle in over 80 years.”


For more information on the work that The Wandle Trust has and continues to carry out on the river, click here.