When I was much younger I used to obsess about owning a fishing boat. I know next to nothing about boats and navigation I might add, but I always hankered after my own boat that I could use to access waters which I obviously can’t get to from the shore. I loved the idea of spending hours on end out on the water, and I really enjoyed imagining how I would set up my ideal boat for fishing and so on. A mate of mine has just bought a new boat and I reckon he’ll have a lot of fun with it. There’s a lot of water out there that obsessed shore anglers like me are not going to be fishing…………
I used to do a hell of a lot of boat fishing back in the day, but it was always with skippers or anglers who knew what they were doing on a boat - because I very much didn’t. I had to do some exam retakes after my first year at Plymouth uni because I had been on one of those Channel Island and back wrecking trips, and I sort of forgot about some exams and ended up flunking them. If I hadn’t passed the retakes I’d have been kicked out of uni, but I managed to scrape through and spare the blushes! I eventually fell out of love with that long range wreck fishing because the endless steaming to and from was so tedious, but of course there’s a whole world of exciting inshore boat fishing out there. I got to do a fair bit of it with some friends over the years and a few specific fish and experiences are forever lodged in my memory.
But these days I don’t find myself drawn to going boat fishing that much, albeit there’s a lot of UK stuff I obviously haven’t done and would love to see at some point. Fishing is such a visual thing for me that it kinda breaks me to be “stuck” on a boat from a photography point of view, and especially when you are miles from land and the light is crap. I remember being on a photo job many years ago and asking the skipper if we could take a little tender out with us so I could literally row around the main charter boat to get some better photos. I don’t think it was the safest thing to do, but at least I managed to get off the main boat and change the angles with my camera gear. It depends where I am fishing, but shore fishing usually gives me SO much more photographic opportunity. I really need this because I love the photography side of fishing so much. I guess the visual side literally talks to me.
Another thing that really does it for me with shore fishing over boat fishing is the physical side. I have always seen the walking, scrambling and wading side of shore fishing as a seamless part of the whole fishing experience. I need it. It depends on where you fish and what you choose to do of course, but generally I far prefer it when a fishing session revolves around a decent bit of exercise as well. There is exercise and there is exercise of course, but I would suggest that a saltwater lure angler especially is going to take a fair amount more exercise than a carp angler or a boat angler. I don’t mean that one type of fishing is better than another, rather that for me I see the exercise part of fishing as something I love. Lure fishing forces us to be doing something all the time, and if casting and thinking is combined with a decent bit of walking or scrambling or wading then so much the better in my opinion.
And I’m going to do a hell of a lot more of it this season. I have always been walking fit, but I am way fitter and stronger than I was this time last year, and I am going to use it for my shore fishing to cover more and more ground. When I am running, every run feels a bit different. When I am not really feeling the love, I visualise covering even more ground when I am out fishing as an incentive to keep going and finish the run. Obviously I want to remain fitter and stronger for the good of my heart and my overall health, but my shore fishing is also a big incentive to keep running and going to the gym and so on. The further I walk for my fishing, the less chance there is of seeing other anglers, and I really value quiet and more out of the way fishing. We all have the right to fish anywhere we can legally access of course, but it’s always been my belief that a lot of people can’t really be bothered. That’s just fine by me…………….