Last nights effort was much better and of great personal interest, having spent most of my working life off Fleet Street and lived in Merton just down the road from the Savacentre and bus garage where he was having a go on the Wandle !
I used to fish the Thames at just below Blackfriars on the northern bank and by the Founders Arms on the southern bank - both places have hidden old steps down to the foreshore and water itself - it is harder to get down to the actual waterside of the Thames along there than you would think.
Very tidally affected, even that far up. When going out then general coarse fishing is great, bream, chub, dace, perch and endless roach, all of good size and quality and all suicidally inclined as never ever having seen a hook before !
When the tide is coming in then it switches over to estuarine conditions, flatties flounders and eels....
Must go back and have another bash there, last time I fished it must be more than 10 years ago. Mind you, the mud is pretty foul - though surprisingly there isn't much of it, Thames has reverted to basically a gravel / medium sized stone bottom thereabouts. But definitely wellies or waders a good idea !
The Wandle is a neglected little gem to be honest. Round the corner from where he was fishing in front of the Savacentre is the mill-race behind Merton Abbey Mills, fertile spot for general roach, chub and bits plus (reputed - I never caught one myself or saw anyone else do so) barbel in the faster bits below the weir and under the bridge before it goes under the road.
Over the road and follow the river up northwards a hundred yards or so (bus station on your left) and there is a resident shoal of really decent chub easily visible in the genuinely crystal clear water, hanging around just in front of where it disappears into another culvert for a short distance. Unfortunately never worked out how to get to them, past the obstruction of five foot high railings on the road side and fencing on the other side to a public park. Easy enough to cast or trot down to them from the small bridge, but no way to net or land a decent fish (drop net ?).
Beyond that if you trace it you are genuinely into urban wilderness country, a wild fresh little river running behind the backs of houses that ignore it, with the odd dumped bike and moped ever hundred yards or so BUT also with lovely little pools stuffed full of nice chub and roach. Not huge but amazingly good fun with a short 7 foot rod and light line (anything longer is impossible due to the overgrowth).
Head back upstream from the Savacentre and there is a lovely stretch a couple of feet deep but 20 ft or so wide through a public park, Ravensbury park I think it is from memory. Which doesn't look enormously like anything special but which contains some very decent fish, including doing me the courtesy of my best ever brace of roach, 1 3/4 lbs + 1 1/2 lbs !
Though I never saw hide nor hair nor a sniff of a trout in the Wandle myself.... definitely fast enough, clean enough and plenty of insect life to support a brown trout population though. If only someone from the EA or Merton would authorise and stock a few thousand fry....