The giant mahseer of India’s river Cauvery could become extinct within a generation. Pollution, hydropower projects and blue-finned mahseer, which are not native to the river but were introduced to improve fishing, are all factors sending the population of the orange-finned or humpbacked mahseer to dangerously low levels. Introducing non-native mahseer to boost stocks...
Read more →The extraordinary story of John Hirst, who spent much of the First World War fishing in the heart of some of the fiercest fighting, is told in the latest edition of Classic Angling magazine. Hirst, who died in 1963, aged 75, kept a highly detailed fishing diary from 1901 until 1948 that relates how...
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The finest collection of Allcock Aerial reels ever to be seen at auction will be the star turn at Mullock’s in Ludlow on Saturday (July 19). There are so many Aerials that the collection is being offered over eight sales to avoid flooding the market with premium reels. They have been compiled by Scottish...
Read more →Some fine and rare fishing books are up for auction at PBA Galleries in California tomorrow (March 27). They include: * presentation copies of Zane Grey’s An American Angler in Australia, Tales of Swordfish and Tuna and Tales of Tahitian Waters; * one of the superb 30 collector editions of Rare and Unusual Fly...
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A teenager claims to have invented a new sport: sewer fishing. Kyle Naegeli of Texas appears on a Youtube video catching catfish and bluegills from the storm drain next to his house. He claims that all you need is some line, bait and patience. He is shown dropping the bait down the sewer, then...
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Kill zones with baited lines targeting large sharks such as great whites are being set up in Western Australia. The state government is to hire professional fishermen to catch and kill large sharks that enter a zone within 0.6 mile from shore. The measures follow six deaths in two years from sharks, the most...
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Unhooking a tiger shark is a job best left to those experienced at dealing with one of the sea’s most feared predators, but the fish’s formidable teeth didn’t deter these amateurs fishing off a beach in Coral Bay, western Australia. They climb on its back and remove the hook with what looks like a...
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A subscription to Classic Angling is obviously the finest Christmas present you can buy for a friend or loved one. (We’ll even send a special Christmas card as part of a new sub: just phone or email us.) But for those who already have a subscription, or if just don’t want to spend more...
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Steve Wozniak (not the one who co-founded Apple Computer) is aiming to catch 2000 species of fish on rod and line, and he’s now up to nearly 1300. That may sound like a dull and obsessive quest, but Steve keeps it entertaining by documenting his worldwide travels with stories and pictures like the one...
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A very rare 1887 Allcock catalogue is on offer at an online auction. It has 38 plates, with eight of them in colour, showing rods, reels, flies, lures, nets and creels. It was clearly designed to cover several markets because the front cover reads: “S Allcock & Co, Redditch, England, Angleterre. Album d’Illustrations. Gezeichnetes...
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Actress Gillian Anderson poses naked with a conger eel to publicise a campaign against destructive fishing practices. The campaign, run by the charity Fishlove, aims to raise awareness of unsustainable overfishing that is endangering the marine ecosystem. You might wonder how a celebrity taking their clothes off and draping a conger around her neck...
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A biography on the “father of nymph fishing”, GEM Skues, has just been published. It has taken Dr Tony Hayter six years to write GEM Skues, The Man of the Nymph. He also wrote the revered biography on Frederic Halford, but said his latest book had proved a far harder task. “With Halford, there...
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