From the Bank

Twenty years in, this is the advice I actually give people asking how to get into fishing, stripped of everything unnecessary.

Sometimes the sessions that teach you the most are the ones where nothing goes right – here’s what one genuinely miserable blank taught me.

The coarse close season on rivers doesn’t mean fishing stops – it just means it moves. Here’s how I spend those three months.

The single skill that’s improved my pike fishing more than any tackle or bait change: learning to read where fish actually are.

Bass stocks and fishing quality along the UK coast have genuinely improved over the last decade. Here’s what I think is behind it.

Matching the hatch matters, but not in the precise, obsessive way a lot of fly fishing writing suggests it should.

A session diary from a still, misty January morning on home water, and the pike that made the early start worth it.

Age hasn’t made me a worse barbel angler, but it’s changed what I actually do on the bank, sometimes for the better.

Some widely-repeated fishing advice turns out to be wrong, or at least far less universal than it’s presented. Here are five I fell for.

Club match turnouts are down almost everywhere. Here’s what I think is actually happening, and why I’m not as worried as some.