Over on my Urbantrout website (the continuity site for my first book, Trout in Dirty Places) I’ve just launched a new edition of my eco-branded Urbantrout Kryptek Highlander fishing caps.

These are the same amazing, cutting-edge-camo patterned trucker-style caps that I brought to the UK for the first time last year – and now they’re funkier than ever with a new, exclusive 3-D rubber Urbantrout logo badge on the front peak.

Safe to say, these are not your grandad’s fishing caps.

But here at the start of the 2017 fishing season, all my research says they’re the world’s most righteous, stylish, technically advanced and outrageously funky headgear (complete with 10% of profits going direct to help fund urban river mending projects).

Click here to find out more, or here to go straight to the Urbantrout store to buy yours today.

I’ve got a thing for a really good fabric print.

It certainly started when I was working at the big old Liberty department store in the mid-1990s, first on the shop floor, merchandising a 15-yard wall of silk ties, and later in the buying offices, where I’d spend hours rifling through fabric swatches, picking out just the right colours and ranges for the next season’s collections.

Those were the years when I first saw the Wandle, too. William Morris and Arthur Lazenby Liberty had their printing works at Merton Abbey Mills, one of my aunts gave me a hand-carved Liberty printing block rescued decades before from a junk shop in Guildford (at a time when all the prints were being transferred onto silk screens, and the precious old blocks were being dumped or burned) and I took the tube down to Colliers Wood to see where it all began…

All that was a long time ago, of course. But a really good fabric print can still make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, and that’s exactly how I felt on finding the Kryptek family of prints a couple of years ago.

When I started developing a little eco-branded range of fishing products for the Urbantrout website which I’d set up as the continuity blog for my book Trout in Dirty Places, I wanted to offer gear that you probably couldn’t get elsewhere. Funky rasta steelheader beanies, hoodies for non-tweedy urban (and other) fishing… and camo caps that might give a traditional old ghillie apoplexy.

That’s partly why the range is still quite small. But I’m satisfied that it’s helluva different, and here, finally, are the kind of camo caps I really, really wanted.

According to the ‘battlefield to back country’ developers’ notes…

Kryptek patterns utilize multi-level layering techniques by incorporating background shading and random geometrical foregrounds to create a three-dimensional effect that ensures the utmost in concealment at both close and long ranges… Kryptek Highlander is specially designed for those geographical regions that are varied… increasing stealth when pursuing a wide range of quarry in mixed terrain.

So… impressive stealth pedigree for starters (Kryptek is shortlisted as one of three potential patterns for the US Army’s Future Soldier programme), plus crisp, graphic lines that to this old print buyer are nothing short of beautiful, channelling just the kind of nervous, random geometric ripple you see on sun-dappled river currents, coloured with every shade of green, brown and grey you’ll find on the margins of urban streams and rural rivers alike.

By now you’ll have gathered I’m just a tiny bit excited to have these things for sale in my Urbantrout store, not to mention prowling the Wandle’s banks…

“Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful”. I reckon old William Morris would approve.

Update: For the 2017 fishing season, I’ve restyled these caps with exclusive 3-D rubber badges. Click here to take a look.

In gaps between briefs for several fascinating freelance copywriting gigs in busy London agencies, I’ve recently been devoting a little extra time to new product development for my Urbantrout eco-brand…

… launched in 2013 and gaining a satisfyingly culty underground following among them as knows (look at that lucky orange hoodie on West Country fishing guide Pete Tyjas!)

This week, after inordinate squinting at pantone reference cards to get the tone-on-tone exactly right, I’m stoked to launch a new hyperstealth colourway of the instant-classic Urbantrout fishing hoodie – now with dark-green-on-olive logos for even more blend-into-the-background on your favourite urban river.

Like all the other Urbantrout hoodies and t-shirts, these new hyperstealth hoodies are ethically produced with WRAP certification, and 10% of profits will go directly to help fund urban river restoration projects such as CATCH in Wincanton.

Have you been thinking of picking up a new fishing hoodie for the new river fishing season? If so, click here to check ‘em out in the Urbantrout shop and grab yours today!

As I’ve recently noted over on my Urbantrout blog, this is the time of year which can show even the best angler exactly what he’s been failing to catch all season… and early winter on the Wandle is no exception to this universal law.

It’s a curious fact that since we saw that first pair of trout cutting redds on New Year’s Eve in 2007, the peak of activity actually seems to have crept a little earlier as each spawning season rolls round. By mid November this year, one of the Wandle Trust’s catchment officers had already spotted the telltale signs of trout getting down to some concentrated gravel cleaning. 

When I walked downriver the following afternoon, the trout were still there: two big fish cruising the daylight shallows like nuclear submarines, with their grey backs half out of water and clear wakes veeing off their dorsal and adipose fins…

The latest instalment of my Urbantrout Diaries column has now gone live on Flyfishing.co.uk, complete with stunning freeze-frame photos by one of our local project partners.

(And since I wrote this piece, even more redds have appeared in other areas of the upper river, including the Riverfly monitoring site where we found the first recorded wild-spawned Wandle trout fry of the modern era… which all gives rise to well-founded hopes that this could be the most productive spawning season yet).

In the meantime, while the trout have been getting down to business, Duncan and I spent the last few days quietly working away on building a website for the new South East Rivers Trust.

I’ve done most of the front-end copywriting and UX design, while Duncan added photographic genius and handled all the hosting and other really important and complicated infrastructure behind the shiny (yet deceptively informative) exterior.  It’s all intentionally designed to mirror the look and feel of the existing Wandle Trust site, with full facilities for taking on its own personality to reflect the wide new range of rivers we’ll be trying to help improve in the next few years.

On and off the water, 2013 may be drawing to a close… but we’re already looking far into 2014 and beyond.

(Photo 1: Lysanne Horrox)

Several evenings in the past two months, I’ve followed the track of one of our previous volunteer balsam-pulling days, sniping late stragglers that pop their heads above the parapet of rusting brambles and bindweed. Absent overshading and other competition from its fellows, it’s amazing how the most inconspicuous seedling will snatch its chance to shoot skywards: these are the late-germinating plants that can scatter enough of their own seeds to cause problems next year, so it’s well worth taking an hour or two to make sure as few as possible get through. 

I’ve carried a rod on most of these trips, not so much planning to fish as being prepared for the places where good fish sometimes happen. One of those was a hefty dace (you won’t often hear those words in close conjunction), another was a three-pound chub that suddenly wandered down-river towards me, slurping negligently from the surface, ripe for interception with a favourite midge pattern…

Documenting some of my personal efforts to get on top of the scourge of invasive non-native species on the Wandle, the latest episode of The Urbantrout Diaries was recently published on Flyfishing.co.uk.

If you haven’t found it yet via other sources, please do click through and enjoy!

Having been quite closely involved in bringing World Rivers Day to the Wandle for the first time in 2008, it’s going to be a real buzz to see this year’s global festival marked by the official launch of the Wandle Valley’s HLF landscape partnership projects.

I’ll be spending this Sunday at the Wandle Piscators’ fishing event at Merton Abbey Mills, catching up with fellow writers Charles Rangeley-Wilson and Dominic Garnett, and maybe helping a few urban fly-fishers get ready for the colder months with my Urbantrout eco-branded hoodies and beanie hats.

If you’re anywhere near south London on Sunday, drop in at the William Morris between 12 and 5pm to say hello!

If you want to stroll the banks of a manicured chalkstream, or cast a fly across a well-appointed salmon river, there’s plenty of old-school tweed and waxed cotton to help you look the part. 

Alternatively, if you’re planning a week’s survival camp in Norway or Kamchatka, with nothing to keep you alive except bear-spray and space-tech fabrics, the catalogues are crammed with choice. 

But what if you’re one of us – the new tribe of urban fly-fishers – who just wants to fish where you live, blend into your busy urban surroundings and remain undetected by everyone except (perhaps) other members of your own movement? 

That’s why Urbantrout fly gear is here.

Over on my Urbantrout site I’ve recently been launching my new eco-brand: Urbantrout-badged street-style fly-fishing gear.

(If you’ve worked beside me in the busy buying offices at Liberty’s department store, or anywhere at the fast-moving convergence of urban fly-fishing, charity marketing and fundraising, and corporate social and environmental responsibility… none of this may come as a complete surprise).

And here’s one other important thing. 

Every year, we’ll donate a full 10% of Urbantrout-branded product sales profits to urban river restoration projects. 

Our reasoning is that without the hard-to-fund projects that are constantly improving our inner-city fisheries as a precious common resource, few of us would be fishing these urban rivers at all. 

We’ve been greatly inspired by the generosity and environmental advocacy of global brands like Orvis and Patagonia, and while we’re vastly smaller (for now) than these industry leaders, we’re just as passionately committed to environmental responsibility. We’ve no idea how much difference we’ll be able to make by donating this deliberately high percentage of our profits, but we want to give it a hell of a good try…

Last Saturday saw our official launch on the Wild Trout Trust stand at the British Fly Fair International, and the whole introductory range of hoodies, t-shirts, fishing caps and window stickers is now available to buy online.

Fish where you live, rock your urban fly-fishing, and wear Urbantrout gear to show your support for the urban river restoration movement!