The above title may seem a bit unusual, but by the time you have read this, it should, hopefully, make sense. It is a story of one of my more recent trips to France in pursuit of large carp. The visit to France took place in the month of October. When planning this trip, I…

I had disgraced myself by casting a spoon into the rigging of one of these aquatic spacecraft and Jeff had gotten a little panic stricken as a result. He’d snuck aboard, freed the lure then swiftly bundled me into his truck and shot off home before we were spotted, and he was recognised. Once home,…

This one starts in New York, in the Time Life building on Sixth Avenue. I’d just got back from a six-week grind covering the 1990 World Cup in Italy, during which about 90% of the games were mind-numbingly boring – like, in fact, most football games. (My genes are rugby-orientated: down my way we call…

Like Desroches, Alphonse is one of the Amirantes island group, about 250 miles south of the main island of Mahé. Alphonse Island itself has a large circular reef, within which is a shallow lagoon of finest talcum powder coral sand.The Alphonse hotel complex is a recently-built collection of ‘A’ frame chalets on short stilts. About…

Goa is a popular holiday destination for Britons, and there are a number of centres catering for all tastes. South of the capital, Panjim, there are numerous quiet beaches that offer a Robinson Crusoe like holiday, whilst north of Panjim there are the main holiday centres of Bagga and Calangute, both of which have a…

The Price of Paradise“Fly-fishing Florida’s fun flats, fists full of fighting fury” etc. Well, we’ve read it all before and of course, for some lucky people, the dreams do come true. The Triple. The tarpon, permit and bonefish in one day… the Grand Slam…etc. What the really glossy mags rave on about… Well, you won’t…

If someone is not a fisherman it must be hard to understand the sorts of feelings that go through our minds and bodies at times like this. Lake Nasser is, I would guess, most freshwater fisherman’s Mecca, a dream water where you can catch crazy fighting fish bigger than you are – and be in…

The offshore potential of the Seychelles has been an open secret for longer. The islands lie on a relatively shallow plateau that rises out of the great depths of the open ocean. The wide expanses of the Indian Ocean feed huge numbers of fish into the crystalline waters of the islands. Here swim marlin, sailfish,…

Some people may just fancy a change from sharking (or is that rest from the physical exertions?) or a chance at yet more species unavailable from our beaches. A trip abroad is a big undertaking by anybody’s standards, so whilst most of you will find it difficult to drag yourselves away from the sheer adrenaline-fuelled…

We are trolling slowly homewards at the end of Major and Mrs. Bruce Kinloch’s two-day charter. It has been both a celebration of fifty years of marriage, and a quest to find a blue marlin for the Major, who – despite some forty years of service on the African coast in various civil positions –…