Flicking through my daily newspaper I came upon the cartoons – I’m not an F.T reader you understand, – there was this drawing of two monks facing each other. The monk on the far side had a large cigar in his left hand and a tumbler of whisky in his right, behind him stood two…

So here we are at the end of my barbel year. I would dearly love to be able to tell you that I have had a great burst of activity in December and blitzed my remaining target but it was not to be. For the third month running the Severn came up into the fields…

Depending on where you are geographically located will determine either that you need to be able to cast a long way, or that an over head thump will put you amongst the fish. This is generally dictated by the type of fishing and terrain being encountered. For example anglers in the North East are blessed…

A couple of boats got out to the Skerries last weekend during a very brief window in the weather and came home with several plaice. So without doubt, this horrendous weather does have a silver lining in that it is keeping the sea temperature up and the fish are in early….. who knows, the Bass…

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…

The weather was still fairly mild on the first trip so again we were hopeful of some action; soon livebaits and deadbaits were in various positions around the swim. Gary’s live bait was taken first at around dawn but it only produced a small jack pike. The rest of the day did not improve much…

In reality the political scene, whether related to angling or any other topic, has not changed. Politicians and their lackeys promise everything to everyone, but very little ever gets done and so nothing really changes when anglers want improved fisheries and the environmental necessities that would guarantee those improvements.This was brought home to me recently…

On days when there has been little wind and some cloud cover the fish have been feeding avidly on the huge hatches of buzzers that have been in evidence. I have had a couple of guiding trips this week and thoroughly enjoyed both the company and the fishing. On Monday I took my client to…

Stockholm is only a 3 hour flight from the UK and a short transfer later you can be in the midst of some of the most breathtaking scenery and fishing on the planet. Many angling holidays, especially fly-fishing, start at prices which put them out of reach of many people. With this very special offer…

Articles by John Young John Young John Young has been fishing since 1972. He started by drowning maggots for anything that came along but soon donned a floppy green hat and joined the specimen hunting scene. In the late 1970s he started pursuing carp and soon caught his first 20lber on diced potato. Years later,…