For anglers · Wed, 05 Aug 2026

Where can I fish a clean stretch?

No sampling points are scoring all-green for anglers. 41 are amber, 48 red. The most common failure modes are elevated ammonia from sewage / agricultural runoff and active spills nearby.

No green stretches right now — what to do

Use the postcode finder above
Enter your postcode to see every overflow, sampling point and recent flag within 5 km of where you fish.
Switch to all-purpose mode
Our main safe-spots register shows 0 sampling points with all-green chemistry — useful for getting a feel for general river health even where nutrient readings are sparse.
Check your local angling association
The Angling Trust's Water Quality Monitoring Network trains volunteers to test nutrient pollution — adds high-frequency citizen-science readings on top of the EA feed.

Active spills to avoid right now· 29

Storm overflows currently discharging. Avoid fishing within 5 km downstream until conditions settle (typically 48 hours after heavy rain). Fish kills downstream of dry-weather spills are a direct ammonia-toxicity signal worth reporting.

How “clean stretch” works for anglers

Nutrient pollution first. We require a recent reading of ammonia, nitrate, nitrite, total phosphorus, or orthophosphate — the indicators that drive algal blooms, ammonia toxicity, and fish-stream health under the Water Framework Directive.
Within WFD “good” or better. Ammoniacal nitrogen < 0.4 mg/L · un-ionised ammonia < 0.025 mg/L · nitrate < 7 mg/L · nitrite < 0.03 mg/L · phosphorus < 0.05 mg/L. Drawn from the Environment Agency's WFD river standards.
No active spills nearby. Within 5 km, no storm overflow currently discharging. Sewage raises ammonia and depletes oxygen quickly — even a green test from yesterday is unsafe if a spill is happening today.
Recent enough. The nutrient test must be within the last 14 days. Older readings get flagged stale.

Note: dissolved oxygen — the single most important indicator for fish — is published by the EA via the Hydrology API (continuous sondes), not WIMS (lab samples). We surface DO data directly on relevant overflow pages where a sonde is in range. Lab DO from WIMS is intermittent across the inland network and isn't in our safe-spot scoring as a result.

Where can I fish a clean stretch?

No green stretches right now — what to do

Active spills to avoid right now· 29

RIVER TRENT

LAVANT

RIVER GREAT OUSE (NT)

Ellington Brook

Claydon Brook

River Wear

River Tame

Canker Dyke (Culverted)

Culverted Trib Of River Colne

River Tame

Sankey Brook

COUNTER DRAIN

Tributary of Afon Anghof

River Irwell

Nant Brisgyll

River Erch

Nant Cledlyn

Afon Bowydd

River Machno

Morecambe Bay

Ormsgill Reservoir (via a surface water sewer)

Ormsgill Reservoir

Afon Lliw

Mill Beck

Mill Beck

Poaka Beck

RIVER TORRIDGE

Walney Channel

YEALM

How “clean stretch” works for anglers