New season, new forum, new other stuff.

Welcome friends to another season on The Urban Fly Fisher!

This is now my tenth year writing this pish diary of musings and I must say I am not in any great hurry to end it. As long as i continue to make new friends and folk keep mailing me I will keep on writing. Something that will make things slightly easier is the fact that I have got myself  a new laptop after the kids bust my old one. Writing posts on my phone and on a tablet was pretty difficult to say the least however I still managed to rumble on through. Trying to edit pictures was difficult however like I say I am now back in he hot seat.

Speaking of new things the forum is gaining members back again, it is now on its third and final outing (promise no more deleting members and posts) and has around 70 members. When I scrubbed it we had over 300 so slowly but surely we are getting there. If you have not joined (again) already please do sign up over here. 

Seeing as how this is my tenth year I was wondering the best way to celebrate and have not managed to come up with anything other than to give you guys an open invitation to meet up and have a fish and a chat. All you have got to do is send me an email using the contact form and we can meet up whenever I get a chance to get out.

I am looking forward to it already!

As usual if you wish to donate some cold hard cash to my hosting fund to ensure my wife never actually finds out how much it costs to run a successful fly fishing blog then you can donate by pressing the donate button on the sidebar, it takes you to paypal and to be honest  even a couple of bucks go a long way when I am scrambling around on hosting fees month.

As posted on Fish Kelvin unlike other clubs who get out there and freeze themselves with no hope of a fish in February we wait a few weeks until it has warmed up a tad and there is still no hope of a fresh fish but we may catch a trout.

Consequently our annual opening day ceremony will be on the 23rd March meeting at the Islay Inn pub the address is:

1256 Argyle St  Glasgow G3 8TJ

Please click this link for directions. – if you are unsure where you are going please contact the association.

The ceremony will start in the bar at 1130, we will meet have a chat and then be piped down to the river where someone will brave the Glasgow City Council anti drinking bylaw and toast the river with a dram whilst tourists take your photo.

Here is last years:

Rivefly Monitoring

Paul posted this over on the Fishkelvin site:

Here is some more information on the Riverfly Monitoring Project that was discussed at the AGM. We need as many volunteers as possible to commit to taking samples once a month. This is your opportunity to help protect the Kelvin and ensure it’s continuing improvement. Please get in touch if you would like to attend the meeting. There will be volunteers from other organisations associated with the Kelvin, so it’s important that we are represented. In fact it is important that we are seen to be providing the lion’s share of the volunteers.

Clyde Riverfly Monitoring Partnership (CRIMP)

The Clyde River Foundation and Riverfly Partnership warmly invite all club members to the Clyde Riverfly Monitoring Partnership launch meeting to be held on

Sunday 17th March 2013, 1.00pm – 4.00pm.
Lecture theatre 1, Graham Kerr Building, University of Glasgow, G12 8QQ.

CRIMP is a citizen science project which aims to provide training in riverfly monitoring to volunteers across the eight counties of the River Clyde catchment. Riverfly monitoring can help protect the quality of our rivers; increase our knowledge and understanding of invertebrate populations and promote the conservation of their habitats. Volunteer involvement is important to the development of this project and will allow us to assess the sustainability and practical benefits of using the method on a large scale. CRIMP will provide another tool to inform management of the fishery and freshwater ecosystem. For example, we have had two recent examples of river pollution (one in Lanarkshire and one in Renfrewshire) where well-trained volunteers could have sampled the incidents more quickly than even the statutory bodies – we see this as a way of helping to protect your river; your fishery.

CRIMP will involve the Clyde River Foundation (CRF) coordinating monthly river health checks undertaken by specially trained volunteers. We will deliver training workshops in riverfly monitoring three times per year, followed by a half day site selection and sampling “run through” day with each angling club. From there, volunteers will monitor their given sites monthly and report their results to the CRF. The CRF will collate and check results, and report back every three months to contributing angling club secretaries, with a facility for more rapid communication with the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) if pollution is detected.

 

Bottom line is I am doing it as I just enjoy being next to water and this will be easy to do. If any of you chaps can make it along that would be great!

See you on the river, in a classroom or across the internet!