Not always true, but when fishing into dark, deep water for a Conger eel which could tip the ton or bouncing a big bait downtide of a rusting wreck for a springtime Ling that could bump the scales around to forty or fifty pounds, then you want a rod and reel capable of standing up…

The whole thing blew up while I was working flat out. By flat out I mean 16 hour days! Not that I have to work this hard most of the year, but it just happens that my greatest workload comes when I most want to go fishing! A few people such as Eddie Turner did…

Anyway, onto the matter at hand, last month I wrote about some zander fishing venues, this time I thought I would tell the story of one of my most successful zander fishing seasons, to be more precise, the autumn and winter of 1994/95.A Good Zander SeasonAnd so the new target had been set. It had…

I, myself have been fishing for zander on and off for about fourteen years now, in and around Cambridgeshire on drains, rivers and stillwaters. I have also worked for the Environment Agency and its predecessors for the past twelve years which has given me a valuable insight into zander populations, angling trends and just about…

Within milliseconds the probing electronic scan began to fill the edge of the screen with fish markings, showing shoals of fish hanging in the up-swell of current; the food-rich water accelerating from the depths, bringing with it the microscopic plankton and feed stuff that fish such as Whiting are on the prowl for in such…

As well as asking where to go and when, the other most common question people like to ask is what to take. A whole book could (and a few have !) been written about this subject, but I’ll try and outline a few guidelines below as best I can. Hopefully this will whet the appetites…

With a satisfying clunk, the gimbal fitting slotted into the wide butt pad. All seemed set for a ding dong battle with the hard fighting fish until the angler hurriedly took a big step backward to retain his balance. Then, the rod kicked straight and his line slackened.Angrily the rod was thrown into a corner,…

It was all very wild, wild enough to claim the lives of many a would-be hero, bent on discovering the source of this or that river, or hoping to make his fortune by re-discovering King Solomon’s lost diamond mine. Africa can still kill you, if you’re stupid enough to venture up places like the Congo…

Uptide fishing was developed back in the late 1960’s by anglers who realised that when a boat is fishing in shallow water, at anchor, in a fast tide, then the water flowing past the hull causes noise. This noise is represented as a scare area around the boat that fish avoid.This theory was instantly proven…

This was to be the most exciting and potentially difficult trip to date, we had been doing the research for a couple of years or so and despite a previous knock back in the autumn of 1998 (when we couldn’t get visas issued), the hard work was finally coming to fruition. The UK party consisted…