Trout in Dirty Places, Writing

10 years of Trout in Dirty Places

This month, it’s 10 years since Trout in Dirty Places launched on a (mostly) unsuspecting world. Merlin Unwin Books and Granger’s fly shop in South Kensington threw us one hell of a party, and for a few days, the weird idea of fishing for trout and grayling in urban rivers was making headlines across the media, including the Independent, Radio New Zealand, and even BBC Radio 4’s Today programme with Evan Davis.

Since then, of course, a lot has changed. Quite apart from obvious things like Brexit and a global pandemic (meaning there’s not much prospect of a Trout in Dirty Europe-style follow up for now) I’ve moved from London to Somerset, retired from chairing the South East Rivers Trust (itself celebrating 20 years since we founded it) and started working 3 days a week for the Wild Trout Trust.

Together with editing the Flyfishers’ Journal, and developing ideas for at least 2 new books, this is all keeping me busy enough that I’ve not spent much time on freelance copywriting recently… or even writing much on this website.

Out in the wider fly-fishing blogosphere, it’s noticeable how some of the best of the early-era fly-fishing bloggers (remember Matt ‘North Country Angler’ Eastham and Tom ‘Trout Underground’ Chandler?) have moved their photographic and literary work away from standalone blogsites like this one, and gone all-in to the supermassive shared space of Instagram.

I’ve been over there for a while too. It’s fun, but I’m also pretty sure that TheoPike.com and Urbantrout.net will only continue to grow as my online homes-from-home.

Still, 10 years feels like a good excuse for an occasional remix of some of my favourite TiDP photos on the ‘gram – including some that never quite reached the printed page – and maybe a few updates on the same Dirty Places for good measure. If you’ve been fishing any of them more recently than I have (quite likely in many cases at the moment) I’d love to hear how you’ve been getting on with them, too.

Stay tuned, and find me here on Instagram in the meantime…