The mean, no mercy ferocity of a deep water Conger Eel is the legend which generations of European sea anglers have had to measure their angling abilities against. It is one of the few fish in European waters with the ability to brutally heave your rod into a carbon cracking hoop, rip yards of line…

Another advantage going for huss is that, compared to many other fish, they grow sizeable. Few huss weigh less than 5lbs and there are good numbers to 10lbs. If you’re looking for a specimen, then think in terms of a 12lber as being a really good fish, but 15lb fish are not uncommon. Although huss…

The Porbeagle Shark, Lamna Nasus, is Northern Europe’s ‘biggest big game fish’. It is thought to grow to about a thousand pounds, and the All-Tackle World Record is a fish of 507 pounds, caught by Christopher Bennet, off Caithness, Scotland in March 1993. It has a number of different names; which include, Salmon Shark, Herring…

Now we are into June. The weather is expected to be warmer now and the carp puddles will start to come into their own. As the water warms up so the fish begin feeding in earnest, so the water becomes coloured. The effect of this, is that it provides cover. The fish can’t see you,…

There are never many of these big Spring coalies caught over the deep water wrecks of the English Channel, but the ones that are caught are usually big fish. It would be wishful thinking, but I don’t suppose for one moment that we will ever see a forty pound Coalfish caught in British waters. But…

But this time the quarry was about as far removed as it is possible to be from the princely salmon – this time I would be fishing in the sea, for skate. I had been invited up by my friend Davy to fish from his boat Catchalot, in the Sound of Mull. Reports were of…

Articles by Russell Symons Russell Symons Russ Symons has been an angling Photographer/Writer for over thirty years, the last twelve of which, writing about and photographing the sea and its fish being his full time occupation. Progressing from a black and white darkroom in the attic of his Plymouth home, to the exacting colour requirements…

Bass are predictable, and never more so than in the April to late Juneperiod when they move inshore over the rough ground beaches.The trigger for this inshore migration is governed by the first flushof peeling shore crabs. The crabs shed their old shells and are softfor a short period until their flesh hardens into a…

Nothing beatsseeing a fish chase a muddler as you strip it across the surface. Oftenthe fish will be half out the water and it will still want to eat your muddler. I anchored the boat some twenty five to thirty yards from the foamswept shore line. Having cast the muddler some seventy feet I started…

The best areas for truly wild wrasse are found around the rock peninsulas of the Lizard and Land’s End in Cornwall, the jagged cliff country of West Wales between Milford Haven and Anglesey, and again along the west coast of Scotland. Ireland too, has a massive wrasse potential along its south, north and west coast….