For the second year running I’ve been greatly privileged to contribute a feature to S&TC’s Gamefisher magazine – this time on the hot topic of rewilding, and how it’s actively taking place in Ennerdale on the western edge of Cumbria:

Because water flows downhill, rivers are the sum total of everything that’s happening on the land around them, and now it’s deeply satisfying to look out over Ennerdale’s valley floor and see it covered in an open fuzz of willow, birch and other native trees that our Mesolithic ancestors would have known.

The Liza has a reputation for being one of the most violently energetic spate rivers in Britain, but clearing the conifers has set the river free again, and walking across the bare, wandering braids between the remaining belts of spruce and larch already gives you the feeling of being somewhere much wilder than the edge of the Lake District: Norway, perhaps, or the west coast of Canada…

Most anglers like to think of their favourite fish (whatever those may be) as Churchill apparently thought of Russia: a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. In the case of Ennerdale’s char, this search for mystique may have some truth to it, because these fish really are the riddle at the heart of the Wild Ennerdale project, a landscape-scale partnership between Natural England, United Utilities, the Forestry Commission and the National Trust since 2003.

If the char are doing well again, it’s because the whole valley is coming back to life around them – complete with half-wild Galloway cattle doing the work of ancient aurochs, grazing at deliberately low densities and ploughing up muddy areas to help native trees set seed – and a newly-wild river that’s learning how to throw itself around in the landscape again, eating footpaths, chewing on trees and ripping up joyful meanders at will…

I’m hugely grateful to Tom Fort for giving me the opportunity to write this article (one that I’ve had in mind for some time) and also to Rachel Oakley, the National Trust‘s Wild Ennerdale project officer, for double-checking my facts and supplying some really beautiful extra photos.

It’s my understanding that Gamefisher is prioritised for members of S&TC, but if you haven’t joined yet, you may be lucky enough to pick up a copy at one of the country shows this summer (I’ve sometimes seen them in shops like Farlows too…)

When the authoritative history of whole-river restoration comes to be written, Derbyshire’s Haddon estate will probably deserve a chapter of its own. The Peak District’s limestone River Wye has been legendary for dry fly only rules since 1865, but modern river management took one of its greatest leaps of faith in 2004, when Haddon’s head keeper Warren Slaney launched the award-winning Going Wild project – stopping stocking for good, and diverting all those fish-breeding funds and energies into river restoration and catchment management instead.

Today, the estate’s rivers have a well-earned reputation for their bucolic English character. By most accounts, fishing the Wye, Lathkill and Bradford for their unique wild rainbow trout at mayfly time is as close as you’ll come to an authentic hallucinatory experience without getting stuck on the hard stuff: a narcotic hit of lush meadows, limestone crags, rushing water and rising fish that’s so intense it’s almost painful.

On the other hand, it’s also an open secret that a long stretch of the Peacock Fly Fishing Club’s water flows through the beating heart of Bakewell, complete with flood walls and concrete weirs, footbridges thronged with tourists, and white vans drawn up on the showground for Sunday morning car boot fairs. No prizes, then, for guessing where three reprobate Wandle Piscators chose to spend the first hour of the Wild Trout Trust’s annual grayling-fishing fundraiser last weekend…

A full six months from their breeding season, the legendary Wye rainbows were fit and eager to feed, rounding voraciously on flies intended for more fastidious grayling. If you hooked up, there wasn’t much you could do except play the game fast and hard: team effort landed a 6-pound street-fighter for Adrian…

… while local tackle shop owner Peter Arfield stopped to chat about Trout in Dirty Places and helped me bank a kebab-fed bruiser of my own:

Still, more than enough grayling came out to play with unaccustomed tungsten nymphs to make our Bakewell expedition worthwhile…

… before the real hordes of walkers started crowding the paths behind us, and we agreed we’d find quieter fishing elsewhere, with a little less likelihood of a lawsuit at the end of the line!

One week on from the official launch of Trout in Dirty Places at Grangers in South Kensington, and the slightly scary sense that I haven’t so much dropped a pebble into the margins of a quiet pool as heaved a bloody great boulder into a cast-iron bathtub…

… is slowly starting to subside.

Still, it’s been a busy few days out there on the airwaves and blogosphere, so I reckon the best and fastest sort of summary is the ever-reliable in-no-particular-order link haze:

• “Why town dwellers can get hooked on urban fishing”… fly-fishing the Wandle with Evan Davis on BBC Radio 4’s flagship Today programme
• Fantastic book launch pics from Kavita Kapoor
• A chat with Keith Arthur on Easter Saturday’s Fisherman’s Blues (0700 – 0730, 19:24 onwards)
• “Ever tried trout fishing at Manchester Airport?”  5 top urban fishing spots reported by Yahoo news
• “Trout in Dirty Places – Smashing!” … Alistair Stewart’s review on The Urban Fly Fisher
• “Interesting and inspiring, with the capacity to lead readers down new paths of discovery” … Raif Killips’ review on Fly Fishers’ Republic
• “BUY THIS BOOK” … forthright advice from Manchester Fishing Fiend‘s Mike Duddy
• “If you have an interest in the decline of industry in the UK, and the efforts and selfless actions of small conservation groups and local fishing clubs… then you need to buy Trout in Dirty Places”… Ian Gould’s view from One More Cast
• “Lo and behold, the shopping trolley that features on my cover shot for Theo’s new book is still exactly where it was before!”… my urban fishing partner-in-grime Dominic Garnett returns to Tiverton’s River Lowman
• Fly Forums discussions here, here, here and here
• On Caught by the River, the full text of Charles Rangeley-Wilson’s foreword for Trout in Dirty Places
• And last (but certainly not least) typically deft summation tinged with national psychoanalysis from Tom Chandler’s Trout Underground …

If overwhelming isn’t quite the word I’m looking for, it’ll probably do for now. And I’m immensely grateful to everyone who’s read and enjoyed Trout in Dirty Places so far: big, big thanks to you all.

Update: My interview with Bryan Crump has now been broadcast on his Nights show on Radio New Zealand, covering a wide range of subjects from sewage in the Thames to parallels between urban and back-country fly-fishing: click on the player below to listen!