Sea Angler

ISSUE 612 AUGUST 2022 The arrival of warm water species in summer is always my favourite time of the fishing year. Each year I plan to tick another bunch of species or techniques off my wish list, but rarely do I get the opportunity to make it happen. The various species of bream are some of my favourite summer visitors. Not only do they tend to look amazing, but they fight hard and taste great too. What’s not to like? This month we bring you some of the best summer fishing that the UK has to offer and we begin on page eight with a familiar face to the world of athletics and coarse fishing, Dean Macey, who, after 45 years of living next to the sea on Canvey Island in Essex,…

Not to get too political, but I don’t agree with fishing the rivers right now, so for the first couple of weeks of the river season I’m always a bit lost about what to do. A few bank holidays ago I took a couple of carp angling pals for a bike ride around Canvey Island, where I live, and as we rode past the sea one of them said, “Oh, I went fishing there once and caught a couple of bass. We were using heavy rods like broom handles and only fishing 20 yards out off the rocks”. A couple of days later we were trying to go coarse fishing but it was super busy everywhere we went so I said, “I could get my barbel gear and if you think…

It was fishing that really got me into photography many years ago, and it’s photography which continues to fascinate me just as much as fishing. The two things are completely inseparable in my world, and while I accept that this may not be the case for you, judging by the sheer numbers of fishing related photos I see on social media, or being submitted to a magazine like Sea Angler, I would guess that the majority of you here enjoy taking photos of your fishing. This might be the fish you catch, a friend of yours fishing, some of the fishing tackle you are using or simply the location where you are fishing because it looks so good. In this new series we are going to look at the photography of…

During the summer months, thousands of anglers will adorn the coastline around the UK, blasting out sets of feathers on heavy rods to catch mackerel. While this is a very effective technique for catching large quantities, wielding a beachcaster for hours on end is tiring and will provide little sport. However, by scaling down the tackle you use, a mackerel can put a serious bend in your rod. As a relatively easy-to-catch species, often available in vast numbers, mackerel are overlooked by many anglers and only targeted by those who either want them to eat or use as bait. However, for me, mackerel can provide Britain’s equivalent to tuna fishing, albeit slightly scaled-down. But, if mackerel were much harder to catch, surely they would be one of the most prized fish…

If I had to get into the conversation about which summer species I like to catch the most, I’d get into a list of very subjective criteria that probably wouldn’t mean a whole lot to most people out there. We’re very fortunate in the UK that this influx of fish through the warmer months gives us an incredible variety of species to target. People who inhabit places like Dorset, Devon, Cornwall and the Channel Islands are luckier still; their geographical locations cause some rarer species to frequent their shores. Black bream are a beautiful species to catch with the sun warming your face. I can remember being a child in the 1980s sitting on the rocks with my father, enjoying the afternoon sun and watching him catch them cast after cast,…

Being a world heritage site with spectacular towering rugged cliffs and stunning scenery draws me back time after time to marks along the Purbeck coastline; it truly is a magical location. There are a number of well documented marks which have relatively easy access such as Dancing Ledge, Winspit and Seacombe, but the majority of other marks are lofty perches not really suitable for float or lure fishing. For the adventurous there are a few other hidden gems which allow fishing at sea level although access is often difficult and should only be approached with an experienced guide. During mid August the adrenalin was certainly flowing as I was heading to Blackers; a marked tucked away which is rarely visited by anglers and for good reason. It is a venue that I…