Spring is a great time to be out fishing. Once it was only the lucky trout angler who could enjoy the re-emergence of nature as it recovered from a harsh winter. Now though, with the abolition of the mandatory close season on stillwaters, all anglers can have a dose of spring fever, if they so wish.

Pike action during the Spring can be fast and furious if, and it is a very big if, you get your location right.

Most pike waters have only limited spawning habitat for the pike and if you are not in one of these places your chances of catching are severely reduced. So my aim is to try and point you in the right direction. With a little bit of effort the Spring haunt of the pike can be quite easy to find and can bring superb results.

The Giant Freshwater Stingray (Himantura Chaophraya) is found in various river systems throughout Thailand and S.E Asia and is reputed to reach weights exceeding 1,000lb (450kg). The giant freshwater stingray (GFS) is one of the largest freshwater fish on earth and is one of the least studied creatures on the planet. With very little known about this prehistoric predatory fish and very few documented captures it is truly a fish shrouded in folklore and legend.
The GFS was first formally described in 1989 and there has been very little scientific research concerning this mysterious prehistoric predator since.

To write a book with this title, you know that the author has to :

1) know a fair bit about fly-fishing and 2) have a few bob to spare.

As a passionate lifetime angler with sixteen IGFA fly-caught records to his credit and with his ‘day-job’ as a trial lawyer, Pat Ford has acquired all the correct qualifications.
This book is a coffee table super-special. Packed solid with some of the best angling photography you will ever see, it doesn’t just rely on 300 excellent photos; the wording - as one would expect from a lawyer - is excellent too. Is it good? Read it, check the bank balance, and weep!

The map of the world used to be coloured red. Quite right too: we conquered, captured, colonized, and civilized much of the world. We taught the natives to speak English, queue in an orderly fashion, hold their knives and forks properly, and to maintain a stiff upper lip when being whipped for insolence to their betters. Erhem! Things seem to have changed somewhat.

The Colonials are now often better off than us, and instead of buying our goods to make us rich, they are now exporting vast quantities of very clever stuff to us, and insisting on offering us wonderful touristy sun-baked bargains to make our English winters survivable. I am sure no good will come of it. The first of the colonists to think they could go it alone, were those American chappies. It was, of course, a ridiculous notion to believe that they could manage their own affairs without the input of a bevy of Whitehall mandarins to guide their colonial path, but for some strange reason, they appear to have muddled through passably well; so much so, that they even have this place in Florida that sends folks to walk on the moon, and ruddy great spaceships to place satellites to allow us to talk to each other by bouncing signals off things floating around the earth. A likely story, I say; but all that hacking through the Florida jungle has had some positive effects for we anglers.

I have just returned from a four day expedition to the Ban Pakong River. We were joined by emminent fish biologist Dr.Zeb Hogan and Nat Geo news writer Stefan Lovgren who like fishsiam share the quest to find the largest freshwater fish on the planet. Fishing a river slightly out of sorts with lower than normal water levels the team accounted for four different specimens in a four day period with fish estimated to weigh upto 130-140kg(1.75m).