It’s 5.55am on June 16, 2025. The gates to the fishery aren’t yet open, but the queue of anglers waiting to gain entrance is already snaking back up the road. The owner, rubbing his hands at the prospect of taking £50 off each of them, soon appears and the vehicles begin the process of filing into the purpose-built car park ...
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- 05 January 2010
As the camera continued to roll, the angler carefully ran his Avon float down the far-bank glide for the umpteenth time that afternoon, the orange tip still frustratingly visible as it bounced rhythmically in the flow. Only this time it suddenly disappeared. A whoop of delight accompanied the bent rod and within seconds a twisting flash of silver was safely ...
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- 15 December 2009
Despite being in the business of routinely breaking big fishing stories, it takes something momentous to bring the entire Angling Times office to a virtual standstill. But on an otherwise ordinary Wednesday morning in October of 2004 a distinct hush descended when the call was taken. Make no mistake, Britain’s first 20lb barbel was massive news. Looking back with the ...
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- 08 December 2009
It is entirely typical of the myths that so often surround legends that everyone, from the minority who knew him to the majority who didn’t, seems to have a story to tell about the late Ivan Marks. Most either relate to his undisputed genius as an angler, the simple brilliance of his logic (‘before you can catch a fish, you ...
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- 01 December 2009
With more and more anglers travelling abroad to catch that 'fish-of-a-lifetime', Steve Partner asks whether they have any merit. For many anglers it remains the ultimate dream. To be able to travel abroad, often to places that are remote, wild or both, and do battle with some of the world’s largest fish is to fulfil a childhood fantasy. Whether it ...
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- 25 November 2009
If the nation’s anglers were asked to vote for their favourite fisherman, it’s highly unlikely that he’d make it into the top 10. In fact, his name probably wouldn’t get much of a mention, full stop. But that could be about to change. In his role as TV presenter, biologist Jeremy Wade ¬ the Suffolk-born former motorcycle despatch rider, supply ...
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- 18 November 2009
Basingstoke Canal, summer, 1979. A six-year-old lad, under the watchful eye of his father, clutches awkwardly on to the cork handle of an old fibreglass rod, eagerly awaiting the next instruction. When it comes, he duly brings the little black onion float high over his shoulder and with a savage jerk whips it forward, the audible ‘swoosh’ instantly drowned out ...
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- 12 November 2009
Last week Gary Huth, who claims to have had the biggest match weights ever, boasted how he now wants 700lb. Steve Partner takes a look at the prospects... Can you imagine just what kind of place the angling world will be in five years’ time if men like Gary Huth get their way? I can and, frankly, the vision borders ...
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- 04 November 2009
If, as the cliché goes, a week is a long time in mainstream politics, then in the governance of fishing, four months is an eternity. Back in June the Angling Trust stood on the brink of financial ruin, its brief existence almost over before it really started. Individual membership had stalled at a frankly pathetic 9,500 and a series of ...
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- 27 October 2009
When is a record carp not a record carp? When it comes from Pavyotts Mill, apparently. That was the opinion of much of the angling world, anyway, when the venue’s owner, Steve Couch, laid out plans to fill his eight-acre Maze Lake with a number of massive 60lb-plus carp to complement the 10 forties he’d already stocked. True, the plans ...
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- 20 October 2009
