Alderney – only 3 by 1 miles and crawling with fish!There is a lot of boat fishing around this island, mainly from Weymouth based charter boats that make the trek over, but it is the shore fishing that has made famous this tiny island just off the coast of France.There is shore fishing all year…

I am often asked what on Earth possessed an ever busy mother of two to pursue fishing with such vigorous determination. Normally I reply that an all consuming passion from around the age of 8 is hard to ignore and that marriage, motherhood, various house moves and authorship of two major Scottish trout fishing books…

Most people think of those spooky mullet that like to hang around marinas and piers, but have you ever gone walkabout up estuaries and creeks, fished unpleasant sewer pipes, or even been lucky enough to have fished the Channel Island of Alderney in the depths of winter?I am getting the impression more and more so…

The press frenzy that occurred afterwards was interesting to say the least, but with their need for a sensational story came the downplay of what was actually an incredibly moving and wondrous experience for those on board.Many of you will, I am sure, remember the stories in the angling press from the 70’s and 80’s…

THE APPEAL – The capture of a sea trout straight from the salt has got to be one of the biggest thrills in angling. Forget stockies or naturally reproducing brown trout, saltwater sea trout are a race apart. In my neck of the woods these sleek silver specimens, muscled up with the rich feeding of…

Around Scotland there is a fabulous selection of trout lochs, more than could be fished in several lifetimes. I start with what must be one of the most well known, LOCH AWE. The history of Awe is a long and illustrious one with at least 200 years of trout angling tucked under its belt. Being…

For some reason I thought I might get to fish the last few days of the fishing season for a change. For the past three years the early morning phone call of “We’ve 30 stone of smelt, on your way mate” has served to wreck my end of season plans. Still, I cannot complain, for…

Ol’ bucketmouth is not the most hard fighting of fish, but what it lacks inspeed and energy, it makes up for with its willingness to bump big baits andput a hefty bend in our rods. When a double figure fish rolls in the washalongside the boat, there is a feeling of fulfilment, that this is…

When the fish are feeding well in the summer they can easily be caught in the margins, as the water is coloured. When it’s colder, the water starts to lose that colour, so the margin fish start to move farther out into the lake. In the colder weather, fishing the waggler means that you can…

As early as the sixties, match aces like Ray Mumford were converting hollow glass roach poles into rods. These rods had properly built cork handles with a counter weight in the butt to make them easier to use. They were also fully rung and normally used with a centre pin for better control. Not only…