TIME MACHINE
Looking back through 40 years of Britain’s biggest and best sea angling magazine…
A look back through our archives.
FEBRUARY 2010
■ A bass tipping the scales at 19lb 8oz was only 1oz 2dr short of Britain’s boat-caught best, taken back in
1987. Chris Rogers, of Portchester, caught the big bass on a squid bait while fishing aboard a small boat in the Solent.
■ There was a new visitor to the coast of North Norfolk in the form of Ray’s bream. Two were caught on consecutive mornings by Kevin Woodhouse, while fishing at Bacton. The fish weighed almost 2kg each.
■ Peter Guscott won the £1,200 first prize in the National Flounder Championships at Teignmouth with a 3lb 8oz 4dr fish. Three fish weighing more than 3lb were caught during the two-day match.
■ Accusations that the new governing body for recreational angling, the Angling Trust, was failing were denied. Chairman Mike Heylin claimed the trust was larger than the six organisations that merged in January 2009. He admitted membership was less than originally planned.
■ A national angling survey revealed that the main reason millions go fishing was to escape the crowds, de-stress and enjoy the outdoors, rather than the pursuit of big fish.
■ Essex was producing some good cod. Walton-on-the-Naze Pier gave up an 11lb 12oz cod for local angler Brian Holgate, while Rob Tuck landed fish of 13lb 2oz 8dr and 5lb at Holland-on-Sea.
2000
■ Fisheries Minister Elliott Morley announced a weekly landing limit of five tonnes of bass per commercial vessel. The National Federation of Sea Anglers had campaigned for 15 tonnes a month.
■ Jersey charter skipper Tony Heart caught a superb black bream. The skipper of Anna II, out of St Helier, boated the 6lb fish off the west coast of the island.
■ Chesil Beach in Dorset produced a 19lb 1oz cod for Ken Mansell, of Southdown, Bath, who was fishing the Abbotsbury section of the famous beach. The fish took a squid bait.
■ Big winter pollack were being caught by wreck anglers fishing form the Devon ports of Brixham and Exmouth. Paul Grafton caught one of 20lb 8oz, while John Pill boated another of 20lb 4oz.
■ A superb 32lb 8oz cod fell to Dave Vingoe, of Farningham, Kent, while fishing a squid bait during a trip on Stu Arnold’s Catchup III, out of Brighton, East Sussex.
1990
■ The largest reported cod of the winter from Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, was a 32lb 12oz 8dr fish landed by Mo Kingston, while fishing from his own boat. It was part of a 12-fish haul, all taken on squid baits.
■ Dover’s Admiralty Pier had re-opened to the public, more than two years after it was damaged in the 1987 hurricane.
■ Dorset angler Nigel Freestone boated two pollack weighing nearly 20lb during a trip on the Weymouth charter boat, Offshore Rebel. Fishing just west of Portland, he boated fish of 19lb 14oz and 19lb 8oz during a 90-minute spell of action.
■ Fishing in the Clyde, once Britain’s premier cod venue, had been showing an unexpected surge in sport. In a boat match fished by 12 anglers out of Largs, Scottish international Hugh Smith caught 63lb of fish, mainly pollack. They also caught 50 codling to 6lb 8oz.
■ The SAMF Championships, formerly the Richot Napoleon, fished at Clacton, Essex, turned out to be a low-weight affair dominated by Mark Pinder and Richard
Mann, both from Ipswich.
■ A 2oz rockling won Hastings angler Mick Lord a tidy £500 in the Pevensey Bay Beach Open fished in high winds by 100 anglers. All the other prizes were allocated by a draw.
1980
■ The famous charter partnership on Our Unity, out of Brixham, Devon, was being dissolved. Ernie Passmore and John Trust had decided to go their own ways, after being pioneers of wreck fishing and conger angling during the previous 20 years. John was teaming up with Dennis Northway to continue operating Our Unity.
■ Sportfishing Club of the British Isles member, Paul Monger, from Wilton, Wiltshire, spent nearly an hour battling a 631lb bluefin tuna off Puerto Rica in the Canary Islands.
■ Proof of the popularity of the annual cod festival in the Firth of Clyde came with news that all 300 boat places for both days of the event were filled two and a half months in advance.
■ Cod made the running in the fish of the month contest. Pick of the bunch was a 36lb 8oz cod for E R Goodman, of Thornton Heath, Surrey, while boat fishing out of Littlehampton.
■ The magazine carried a report of the sinking of Geordie Dickson’s Plymouth charter boat, Artilleryman, some 11 miles south-east of the Eddystone.
The skipper and two anglers were leaving a wreck when the boat starting to take on water and the pumps couldn’t cope. The anglers were put in the life rafts, while Geordie awaited the arrival of a helicopter.