Unfolding, from a backdrop of hostile lunar landscapes and tropical swaying palm groves to where rainbows flicker and dance in the salty mist, floating above the relentless surf, creating an aura of mystery sure to rouse the spirit of adventure.Squadrons of patrolling pelicans glide the contours of the foaming surf and wheeling seabirds wait to…

If you’re an angler and saw the movie ‘The Perfect Storm’ then I’d bet that you came away, as I did, with two abiding images. The first would be of the longliner tk, out of Gloucester, Massachusetts, climbing the glassy, impossibly steep, underside of a huge swell and, inevitably, being flipped over and swallowed by…

Looking at the finished float many anglers confuse it with the “drift beater” but a closer look will reveal that it is entirely a different float. It is first and foremost a reversed balsa wood waggler. If you cut of the sight tip, you are left with a perfect reversed taper balsa waggler.The sight tip…

I took a flight from Baltimore’s International airport for Orlando Florida. One of the great things about flying in the United States is the cheap air fares, compared with rip-off Britain’s air fares, high airport taxes and of course the very high tax on fuel. My destination was the town of Titusville on the east…

One of the main areas is along the East Cape of Baja where, it is said, there are more marlin concentrated in a small area than occurs anywhere else.The marlin are mainly striped marlin averaging around 150lbs, but some are running up over 200lbs and youíre always in with an outside chance of a 500lb…

There are dolphins, both bottlenose and common, pilot whales, Cuvier’s beaked whales and some more cetaceans yet, seen far away, their watery blows arcing into the sky against a cold and arid landscape. Of course, no tuna. No bait. Shearwaters circle aimlessly and gulls wait patiently in small forlorn flocks. Below in the saloon, Nigel…

BioBait change and lunch at 1.45. Nothing to report. Client happy to steer where I tell him as I work cockpit etc. Feel more assured as time goes by without a touch. Water still cold, 70 – 71°, and stiff breeze comes up at 4.00. Head back from the west at 5.10 after another BioBait…

Talking with many farmers up and down the country, in my job as an environmental correspondent, it seems we might not get any fishing on our rivers or streams at all this season because of foot and mouth disease. Many still waters are closed. Those that are open, the weather hasn’t been so good and…

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s get back to Ulan Bator, where I’d arrived after a hellish 28 hours on a train from Beijing, and where I met the man who’d set up my trip who now informed me that the river was a 12-hour ride away aboard a UAZ, a Soviet-built jeep, over…

What we found was very different to that which we had been led to expect, and very different to anything that we had experienced in the past.The Gambia is a tiny country of less than four and a half thousand square miles, and with a population of little more than a million it is significantly…