Fishing regions
What fishing is like in different parts of the world: the disciplines that dominate, the environments available, the words people use, and the shape of the rules. These explain what fishing in a place is like, and open on to the individual waters, marks and venues held for it.
A
Alaska
Five salmon species, halibut on a shelf that goes on for ever, and a fishery whose limiting factor is access rather than abundance.Anglesey
A large island off north Wales separated from the mainland by a strait carrying one of the fastest tidal races in Britain — which is why its fishing is organised around water speed rather than around ground.Australia
A continent where sea fishing is the default, the seasons run backwards from the northern textbooks, and the rules are set by states rather than nationally.Austria
Alpine limestone rivers of extraordinary clarity, nine separate state fishing laws, and an arrangement in which the fishing rights are private property — so the operative permission is bought from an owner rather than issued by a government.The Aegean and Crete
Several thousand islands in a warm, clear, nutrient-poor sea with almost no tide and a wind that blows for days — and a fishery whose problem is that everything in it has been fished for four thousand years.The Agulhas Current
One of the fastest western boundary currents on earth, running warm tropical water down the African east coast and producing both the sardine run and one of the most dangerous seas in the world.The Amazon basin
The largest freshwater system on earth, holding more fish species than the Atlantic Ocean, and running on a flood pulse that moves the whole fishery into the forest and back every year.The Atlantic coast of Ireland
Full Atlantic exposure with warm water arriving on it — a cold-latitude coast holding fish that have no business being that far north, in front of some of the biggest swell in Europe.The Azores
Nine islands strung across five hundred kilometres of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, where the fishing geography that matters is not the coast but the seamounts rising between them from abyssal depth.
B
Balearic Islands
A near-tideless archipelago on its own shelf, with water clear enough that sight matters more than scent, extensive seagrass meadows that decide where everything lives, and a squid and cephalopod tradition that defines the local fishing year.Belfast Lough and the north Down shore
A broad, shallowing sea lough with a city at its head and a rock-and-bay shore along its southern side, ending at a point where the Irish Sea tide starts to run hard.Britain and Ireland
Where the modern sport was largely codified, and the origin of the coarse-and-game division that the rest of the world mostly does not use.Brittany and the French Atlantic coast
A granite peninsula thrown out into the Atlantic between the Channel and Biscay, carrying the largest tidal ranges in Europe, ferocious races around its headlands and islands, and the continental heartland of bass fishing.Bulgaria
A Black Sea coast, a long lower-Danube frontage and a mountainous interior full of reservoirs — administered by a single national recreational fishing ticket that covers salt and fresh water alike, which is unusual anywhere in Europe.The Baltic Sea
A sea whose salinity falls from ocean strength at its entrance to almost fresh at its head, so that marine and freshwater fish occupy the same water and swap places along its length. No other European sea does this.The Baltic states
Three countries on a brackish, nearly tideless sea, with a sea-trout coast, two of Europe's largest lakes, the Curonian Lagoon behind a sand spit, and a winter in which the fishing moves onto the ice.The Bay of Biscay
A wide shelf, a very abrupt canyon-cut edge, and a fetch open to the whole North Atlantic. Those three facts explain the tuna, the swell and the fisheries of two countries.The Black Sea
A sea that is nearly fresh at the top, permanently dead at the bottom, and fed by four of Europe's largest rivers. Almost nine tenths of its water holds no oxygen at all, so its entire fishery lives in a thin surface layer.
C
Caithness and the north coast
The top of the mainland, where the Atlantic and the North Sea meet through the Pentland Firth — the strongest tidal stream in Britain, flagstone cliffs, and cold-water species within reach of the shore.Canada
Three oceans, two million lakes and a federal-provincial split that means the rules change when you cross a provincial line without the water changing at all.Canary Islands
Young volcanic islands rising from deep Atlantic water with almost no continental shelf, where deep water is reachable from the rocks and there are no rivers at all.Cape Verde
Ten volcanic islands six hundred kilometres off West Africa, where oceanic water comes within casting range of a beach and the fishing changes from shore-caught jacks to blue-water game inside a mile.Cardigan Bay and the sarnau
A great open bay in the west of Wales with glacial moraine reefs running kilometres out to sea and drying at low water — a ground type with no analogue anywhere else in these islands — and the largest bottlenose dolphin population in Britain.Caribbean
Warm, clear, reef-dominated water divided among dozens of jurisdictions, where the economics of a live fish caught repeatedly have reshaped the fishery.Central and eastern European river fishing
A continental interior of large slow rivers, engineered channels and reservoir chains, holding wels catfish, zander, asp and huchen — with a fishing culture organised around clubs and licences quite unlike the British or American models.Chesil Beach
Eighteen miles of shingle whose stones are graded from pea gravel at one end to fist-sized cobble at the other, with a tideless lagoon behind it and deep water immediately in front.Clew Bay and Achill
A nursery bay that was once the most famous skate fishery in these islands, an island coast of exceptionally clear water, and the only true fjord in Ireland, within twenty kilometres of each other.Connemara and Galway Bay
A coast its own practitioners describe as unexplored rather than poor, where every bay has a river running into it and the flatfish lists say so.Cork Harbour and the east Cork coast
One of the world's great natural harbours fished as a deep-water shore venue from its quays, with a run of surf beach and estuary east of it that takes an annual autumn codling migration.Cuba
The largest island in the Caribbean, with a thousand kilometres of offshore cays, and a flats fishery whose condition is largely a consequence of forty years of restricted access.Cyprus
The eastern Mediterranean's largest island: warm, clear, nutrient-poor water with almost no tide, a shore fishery of small resident fish, and a reservoir network that makes it one of the few Mediterranean islands with real freshwater fishing.Czechia and Slovakia
Two landlocked countries sharing one angling tradition, in which water is legally classified as trout or non-trout before anything else is decided — and where the licence, the permit and the catch book are three separate obligations.The Cape Peninsula and False Bay
One peninsula with two oceans on it: cold Atlantic kelp on the west side, warmer False Bay on the east, and a summer kob fishery that starts when the south-easter starts blowing.The Cape west coast
The cold Atlantic side: Benguela upwelling, kelp forest, snoek and hottentot, and water that is colder in midsummer than in midwinter because the summer wind is what drives the upwelling.The Causeway and Antrim coast
A basalt coast facing the North Channel, where the whole exchange between the Irish Sea and the Atlantic runs past headlands at speeds that make the tide the governing fact of every session.The Channel shingle coasts
Steep banks of graded pebbles with deep water a rod's length out. The grading is not decoration — it sorts the seabed by particle size, and the fish distribute themselves along that sorting.The Clare coast and the Shannon estuary
Two coasts meeting at Loop Head: Atlantic cliff and rock platform on one side, and on the other a sheltered estuary holding packs of shore tope and thornback ray.The Coral Triangle
The centre of marine biodiversity on earth, where more reef fish and coral species occur than anywhere else, and where the world's largest small-scale fishery works on top of them.The Cornish and Devon coasts
Britain's south-west peninsula has two coasts with different weather, the warmest sea in the country, deep water against rock, and full Atlantic swell — which together produce the widest shore species list in Britain and its most serious rock-fishing hazard.The Croatian Adriatic
A thousand islands on drowned limestone, the clearest coastal water in the Mediterranean, almost no tide and a fierce local wind — and the densest spearfishing culture in Europe.
D
Denmark
Seven thousand kilometres of coast, nothing more than fifty kilometres from the sea, one national licence covering salt and fresh together — and the most developed coastal sea-trout fishery in Europe.Dublin Bay and the Wicklow coast
An urban coast with real fishing on it and heavy pressure, beside a county whose beaches collapsed and whose own guide says so.The Danube
Europe's second-longest river, crossing or bordering ten countries, holding the continent's largest freshwater predators and its most serious freshwater conservation failure — and the clearest possible demonstration that a river's rules change at every border.The Danube basin
Europe's most species-rich river system, running through ten countries, holding fish that exist nowhere else, and comprehensively rebuilt by dams and navigation works.The Donegal coast and its sea loughs
The most exposed coast in Ireland with three deep sea loughs cut into it, so the shelter and the open Atlantic are a few kilometres apart and the loughs fish on the days the coast cannot.
E
East and West African fishing
Two coasts and the greatest lakes on earth — an artisanal fishery feeding tens of millions, a Rift Valley fish fauna found nowhere else, and a set of pressures that make this the continent where fisheries governance matters most.East Asian fishing
The most intensively fished seas on earth, wrapped around the most technically inventive angling cultures — where a great deal of the tackle the rest of the world uses was designed, and where the pressure on the stocks is correspondingly extreme.East Lothian and the Firth of Forth coast
A short stretch of Scotland's east coast where rock platform, reef, clean sand and estuary alternate within a few miles, on cold, comparatively sheltered water with a long shore-fishing tradition.England and Wales
A rod licence for freshwater angling, almost no publicly open fresh water, a close season that survives on rivers and not on stillwaters, and sea angling that is largely unlicensed and heavily byelawed.The East Antrim coast
The basalt coast at the mouth of Belfast Lough, where the Islandmagee peninsula encloses a shallow sea lough on one side and drops as a cliff into the North Channel on the other.The Eastern Cape and the Wild Coast
The rock-and-surf heartland: the coast the blacktail statistic is about, where the Agulhas starts to bite, and where a hundred kilometres of Wild Coast has almost nobody on it.The Egyptian Red Sea coast
A desert coast with coral reef in swimming distance of the beach, no rivers at all, and more European visitors in the water than almost anywhere on earth — where the diving is documented exhaustively and the fishing is barely written about in English.The English canal network
Three thousand kilometres of water dug for freight and now fished by more people than any river in England — shallow, narrow, uniform, and the water on which competitive coarse angling was invented.The English trout reservoirs
Large water-supply reservoirs stocked with trout, on which an entire discipline of fly fishing was invented within living memory — and which now hold some of the largest pike and perch in England as well.
F
Fiji and Melanesia
Where the reef belongs to the village rather than to the state, and where a customary tenure system that predates every fisheries agency is now the basis of modern marine management.Florida
A peninsula between two seas with more distinct fisheries than most countries: flats, reef, offshore, backcountry, spring-fed rivers and a bass fishery, all within a day of each other.France
Three coasts on two seas plus one of Europe's largest inland fisheries, governed by a licensing system that treats fresh water and salt water as almost unrelated activities — and a shore-gathering tradition with no British equivalent.The Fens and their drains
A drained landscape in eastern England where the rivers run above the fields, every water level is set by a pump, and fishing a straight featureless channel is a skill of its own.The Fife, Angus and Mearns coast
One continuous open North Sea run from the Eden and the Tay to the Don at Aberdeen — sandstone cliff, working harbours and two large estuaries, and none of it is the Moray Firth.The Finnish lake district
Tens of thousands of connected lakes cut into ancient rock and stained brown by peat, frozen for months of the year, with a public right to fish that has no equivalent in most of Europe.The Firth of Clyde
A drowned glacial basin, deep, sheltered and almost enclosed — and the clearest case anywhere in Britain of a sea angling fishery that was famous, then was not.
G
Galicia and the Iberian ria coast
Drowned river valleys open to the Atlantic, flushed by one of the world's strongest upwelling systems, producing a coast whose shellfish culture is unmatched in Europe and whose exposure is easily underestimated.Germany
Europe's largest angling population, two seas, the continent's busiest river system — and a licence that in most of the country is issued only after an examination in fish biology, law and welfare.Greece
Fifteen thousand kilometres of coast, six thousand islands, a sea that is nearly tideless and among the least productive on earth — and permission that comes from the harbourmaster rather than from any fisheries body.Greenland and the high Arctic
A coast where the season is measured in light rather than in temperature, the ice is a fishing platform rather than an obstacle, and one fish — Arctic char — carries almost the whole freshwater fishery.The Garden Route
The estuary coast: a warm-temperate stretch where the river mouths rather than the rocks are the main event, and where the country's most important estuarine system sits inside a national park.The Gower and Carmarthen Bay
A limestone peninsula between two great estuaries, with the second largest tidal range in Britain running through it and a cockle fishery that has been worked by the same communities for generations.The Great Barrier Reef
The largest reef system on earth, zoned in detail for what may happen where, and a fishery whose defining constraint is a map rather than a season.The Great Lakes
The largest freshwater system on FishingHQ, shared by two countries, and a fishery that was assembled almost entirely from introductions after the native one collapsed. Nothing else demonstrates so clearly what an invasion does to a food web.The Gulf of Mexico
A warm, shallow, enclosed sea with a vast river pouring into it, thousands of standing oil platforms acting as artificial reef, and a fishery built on both.
H
Hawaii
The most isolated major island group on earth, where deep water lies within sight of the beach, a distinctive shore-casting discipline evolved, and a traditional management system is being formally revived.Hungary
Central Europe's largest shallow lake, two great rivers, a wels catfish culture of international standing — and an angling administration that examines competence and counts every fish taken.The Hampshire chalk streams
Clear, cold, spring-fed rivers running off chalk at almost constant temperature and flow — a rare habitat globally, the birthplace of modern dry-fly fishing, and among the most closely managed fisheries anywhere.The Himalayan mahseer rivers
Snow-fed rivers falling off the Himalaya into the Gangetic plain, holding a migratory carp that reaches enormous size and became the subject of one of angling's oldest conservation arguments.The Humboldt Current
The most productive marine ecosystem on earth by catch, where cold water rising off Peru and Chile supports a single fishery that has been the largest in the world — and collapses when the wind stops.
I
Iceland
A volcanic island in the north Atlantic with internationally significant salmon and char rivers, no public right to fish anywhere, and a biosecurity requirement that has to be dealt with before leaving home.Italy
Eight thousand kilometres of Mediterranean coast, an Alpine river system at the other end of the same country, and a spearfishing tradition that shaped the equipment the rest of the world uses.The IJsselmeer
An arm of the North Sea closed off by a dam in 1932 and turned fresh — now the largest lake in western Europe by area, where every feature of the habitat, from the depth to the fish community, is an engineering consequence.The Indian subcontinent coasts
A coastline where the wind reverses twice a year, taking the currents, the upwelling and the whole fishery with it — and where several million people fish from beaches with no harbour at all.The Isle of Man
A self-governing Crown Dependency in the middle of the Irish Sea with its own parliament, its own fisheries law and its own territorial sea — which makes it the clearest illustration in these islands that a coast is a jurisdiction before it is a place.The Isles of Scilly
A granite archipelago forty kilometres off Land's End with the clearest inshore water in England, almost no fresh water, and a species list that runs warmer than anywhere else in these islands.
J
K
Korea
One peninsula between two seas that could hardly be less alike: a shallow, turbid, enormously tidal west coast and a deep, clear, current-fed east coast, with fishing cultures to match.The Kerry coast
Three peninsulas and the shallow warm bay behind them, where four species of ray are named in single sentences at mark after mark and the tide window is stated for each.The KwaZulu-Natal coast
The subtropical coast: warm Agulhas water, couta and kingfish, the sardine run in winter, and the reefs where the seventy-four was fished to a prohibition.
L
Lake Geneva
The largest lake in western Europe, deep, cold and Alpine, holding charr, whitefish and lake trout — and divided between two sovereign states, so the answer to any question about rules depends on which shore you are standing on.Lake Vänern
The largest lake in the European Union, a freshwater inland sea holding Atlantic salmon that complete their whole life cycle without ever reaching salt water — under a public-access tradition that visitors routinely misread.Lake Victoria and the Rift Valley lakes
The largest tropical lakes on earth, holding more freshwater fish species than anywhere else — and the site of the most consequential fish introduction ever made.Lanzarote
The driest, windiest and lowest of the Canaries, and the only one sharing a genuine shallow shelf — which gives it ground the rest of the archipelago simply does not have.Loch Lomond
The largest freshwater body in Britain by surface area, sitting across the Highland Boundary Fault — shallow and rich at one end, deep and cold at the other, with a fish community that includes a species found in only two places on earth.Lough Corrib
A very large limestone lough in the west of Ireland whose alkaline water, shallow rocky shoals and mayfly hatch produce one of Europe's best wild brown trout fisheries.Lough Erne
Two very different lakes with one name: a maze of drumlin islands and channels above, a deep open lough below, and between them the water that carried Ireland's coarse fishing reputation for half a century.Lough Foyle and its rivers
A large shallow sea lough on the border, fed by a river system that runs deep into both jurisdictions, and administered for fishing by a cross-border agency that exists for no other water in these islands except one.Lough Neagh
The largest lake in Britain and Ireland by area, shallow and rich, carrying one of Europe's last great wild eel fisheries and one of its most severe recent algal bloom crises.Lyme Bay
The great open bay of the west Dorset and east Devon coast, with the Chesil shingle bank forming its eastern shore and two small harbours cut into an otherwise unbroken cliff line.The Lake District lakes
Deep, cold, ice-cut ribbon lakes holding fish that have been isolated there since the glaciers left. The rarest freshwater fishes in England live in them, and they are in trouble for reasons that have nothing to do with angling.The Lecale coast and Dundrum Bay
The stretch south of the Strangford narrows where a low reef coast of harbours and points turns west into a long sand bay under the Mourne Mountains.The Louth and Meath coast
A shallow, sheltered north-east corner that produces ray and tope every season and gets very little pressure, because anglers from the city drive south instead.
M
Madeira
A single steep volcanic island and its outliers, standing on a submarine slope so abrupt that a fishery worked at a thousand metres is prosecuted within sight of the harbour wall.Malta and Gozo
A small, intensely visited limestone archipelago in the middle of the Mediterranean, where everything is reachable on foot or by bus, the diving sector is enormous relative to the size of the place, and the local fishing culture is far older than the tourism.Mauritius and Réunion
Two volcanic islands a few hundred kilometres apart in the open Indian Ocean, with deep water immediately offshore, a lagoon on one and almost none on the other — and a big-game fishery built on a seamount rather than on a coast.Mediterranean
A nearly enclosed, low-tide, historically overfished sea with the oldest continuous fishing culture in the world and the strongest spearfishing tradition in Europe.Morecambe Bay and the north-west England coast
The largest continuous intertidal sand and mud flats in Britain. A place defined by what is uncovered rather than by what is underwater — and by how fast it comes back.Moroccan mountain and reservoir fresh water
Trout streams at altitude in the Atlas, a national system of large reservoirs holding introduced pike and black bass, endemic barbels in the rivers between them, and a hydrology in which the water is not always there.The Maldives
A double chain of coral atolls with almost no land and no rivers at all, whose national fishery catches tuna one fish at a time on a pole and line and has done for centuries.The Mekong system
The largest inland fishery on earth by catch, organised around an annual flood pulse and a lake that reverses the direction of its own river every year.The Moray Firth
A great triangular bight in the north-east shoulder of Scotland: deep cold water, a coast of red sandstone cliff and shingle, the mouths of half the country's best salmon rivers, and a resident population of bottlenose dolphins at the northern edge of the species' range.The Moroccan Atlantic coast
The northern end of one of the four great upwelling systems on earth, producing an enormous sardine fishery, an octopus fishery of international weight, and a surf coast with almost no shelter.The Moroccan Mediterranean coast
Warm, clear and effectively tideless, fed by Atlantic water pouring through Gibraltar that makes the Alboran the most productive corner of the Mediterranean — and a completely different fishery from the Atlantic coast a few hours' drive away.The Mourne coast and Carlingford Lough
A short, steep granite coast where a mountain range comes down to the Irish Sea, ending at a deep fjord-like lough that is also an international border.The Moy and Lough Conn
One of the most productive salmon rivers in Europe running through a town, and the large limestone lough that drains into it — a single catchment holding salmon, wild trout and pike.
N
New Zealand
An isolated temperate archipelago with a distinctive marine fauna, a customary fishing framework recognised in law, and introduced trout in some of the clearest rivers anywhere.North American freshwater fishing
A continent of glacial lakes, enormous river systems and a bass fishery that became an industry — organised around boats, electronics and public access in a way that has no European equivalent.North American saltwater fishing
Three ocean coasts and a gulf, spanning subarctic to subtropical within one jurisdiction — and a regulatory system in which the federal government, the state and the fishery council can all be answering the same question differently.Northern Ireland
A rod licence and a separate permit, two different fisheries authorities dividing one small country between them, and the largest lake in these islands sitting in the middle of it.Norway and the Nordic coast
Deep cold water within reach of the shore, a public right to fish the sea, and a fishing culture built on food rather than on sport.The Netherlands
A country largely built out of water, where the fishing licence is issued by the anglers' own federation and one document covers both the permission and the water it applies to.The Norfolk and Suffolk sandbank coast
A soft, moving coast in front of a field of offshore sandbanks. The banks make the fishing and the softness makes the coast retreat — the same sediment system does both.The Norfolk Broads
A network of shallow lakes and slow rivers that everybody assumed was natural until the 1950s, when it turned out to be flooded medieval peat diggings — and one of Britain's great pike fisheries.The north-east England coast
Hard rock scars alternating with sand bays down the cold western edge of the North Sea — a coast where the ground changes every few hundred metres and the fishery changes with it.
O
Orkney
An archipelago sitting in one of the strongest tidal streams in the world, where the state of the tide decides not just the fishing but whether a small boat should be on the water at all.Outer Hebrides
A long Atlantic-facing chain with the machair shell-sand coast on one side and a rock-and-loch landscape on the other, and some of the clearest inshore water in Britain.The outer Ards coast
The Irish Sea side of the peninsula that walls off Strangford Lough — low, hard, reef-fringed and fully exposed, and the opposite of the sheltered water a few kilometres behind it.The Overberg and Cape Agulhas
The actual southern tip of Africa, a legal boundary in the national fishing rules, and the coast where a marine reserve demonstrably brought the national fish back.
P
Pacific island fishing
Thousands of islands across a third of the planet's surface, where fishing is not a pastime but the foundation of the food system — and where customary marine tenure means the community, not the state, is frequently the authority.Patagonia
A cold, windy, thinly populated end of a continent where introduced trout became one of the world's great fisheries, and where sea-run brown trout reach sizes that exist almost nowhere else.Pembrokeshire and the south-west Wales coast
Old hard rock pushed out into the Atlantic, with islands off the end of it and tidal races between them. The races are the fishery and they are also the reason the coast is treated with respect.Poland
Five hundred kilometres of Baltic shore, two of Europe's great rivers, the largest lake district in the region and a fishing culture where the first document is an examination rather than a payment.Portland Bill and the Portland Race
A limestone headland projecting into the Channel with a tidal race off its tip that is one of the most dangerous pieces of water in northern Europe, and one of the most productive.Portugal
A long Atlantic coast with almost no shelter, fed by the same upwelling that makes Galicia productive, and a country whose fishing culture is organised around octopus and salt cod to a degree no other European nation approaches.The Pacific Northwest coast
Cold, productive, upwelling-fed water against a coast of rock, kelp and drowned inlets, with rivers that carry salmon inland. Three things FishingHQ already models — salmon runs, razor clam biotoxin closures and descending-device rockfish release — all belong here.The Purbeck coast and Poole Bay
A limestone coast of ledges and a sheltered bay behind it, so an angler can fish full Channel exposure and near-flat water within the same few miles depending on which side of the Head they choose.
R
Romania
Europe's largest and best-preserved river delta, six hundred kilometres of lower Danube, a short Black Sea coast — and the continent's most severe fish conservation problem swimming through all three.The Republic of Ireland
No general coarse or trout rod licence, a separate state licence and share certificate for salmon and sea trout, a naturally sparse native fish fauna, and some of the most accessible pike and coarse fishing in western Europe.The Rhine
Western Europe's most industrially important river: an Alpine torrent turned into a shipping canal, biologically destroyed by a single chemical spill in 1986, and deliberately rebuilt in one of the largest river restoration programmes ever attempted.The River Ebro
Spain's largest river by flow, dammed into a chain of vast reservoirs, and the water that made wels catfish a destination fishery for northern European anglers — almost entirely on species that are not native to it.The River Spey
The fastest of Scotland's great salmon rivers, and the one whose name became a casting technique used on every large river in the world.The River Tay
The largest river in Britain by volume, draining a seventh of Scotland through a chain of lochs to a great tidal estuary — and the river that produced the largest rod-caught salmon ever recorded in these islands.The River Thames
A river declared biologically dead in the 1950s that now holds well over a hundred fish species along its length — one of the better environmental recovery stories in Europe, and an unfinished one.The River Trent
A big lowland river that industry effectively killed and water treatment brought back, and now one of the most productive coarse rivers in England. The recovery is the story.The River Tweed
A large Border river with an autumn salmon run of international standing, governed since the nineteenth century by its own statutory commission across an England-Scotland boundary.The River Wye
One of Britain's great mixed rivers — historically a salmon river of the first rank, now better known for barbel and chub — and the clearest current example of what nutrient pollution does to a river system.The Ryukyu Islands
A thousand kilometres of subtropical coral island chain trailing south-west from Japan, where the fishing has more in common with the Philippines than with Honshu and the culture was a separate kingdom.
S
Scotland
No rod licence for coarse fishing, a wholly separate statutory system for salmon and sea trout, a legal right of responsible access that England and Wales do not have, and a coastline with the strongest tidal streams in these islands.Scottish sea lochs
Glacial fjords with a shallow sill across the mouth. The sill is the whole point: it makes the deep water behind it a partly separate sea with its own temperature, its own oxygen and its own fish.Shetland
Further north and more exposed than Orkney, with deep water against the shore, a Norse fishing vocabulary and an island group that has always been a fisherman with a croft rather than a farmer with a boat.Skye and the Inner Hebrides
Deep sea lochs cutting far inland beside exposed Atlantic coast, with fresh and salt water within a few hundred metres of each other and a sea trout fishery that collapsed and is being watched.South Africa
Two oceans meeting at a continental corner, with a cold productive Atlantic coast on one side and a warm Indian Ocean coast on the other, and a shore fishing culture built on both.South American fishing
The richest freshwater fish fauna on earth on one side of a mountain range, and one of the most productive cold upwelling coasts on the other — with a trout fishery in the south that was imported and became world-famous.South-East Asian fishing
The centre of the world's marine biodiversity and the largest inland fishery on earth, feeding hundreds of millions of people — and the region where the gap between a visiting angler's experience and the everyday reality of fishing is widest.Southern African fishing
Two oceans meeting at the bottom of a continent — one cold and upwelling-driven, one warm and tropical — with a shore-fishing culture that is among the strongest anywhere and a great inland river system behind it.Spain
Two seas, seventeen fishing administrations and one of Europe's largest shore and spearfishing cultures — where the first question is never what the rule is but which government sets it.Sri Lanka
A tropical island with reef, surf and estuary on the coast and an ancient network of man-made reservoirs inland — one of very few destinations where a visitor can seriously fish both salt and fresh from the same base.Strangford Lough and the Ards coast
A large, shallow, island-strewn sea lough fed through a narrows that runs one of the strongest and most reliable tidal streams in Europe — reliable enough that a commercial tidal turbine was tested in it.Sweden
A hundred thousand lakes, two seas of very different salinity, and a public right of access with a boundary drawn precisely enough that knowing where it stops is the whole of the regulatory question.The Severn Estuary
The second largest tidal range in the world, in a funnel-shaped estuary so turbid that fish hunt by lateral line, with a tidal bore running miles upriver and an elver fishery of real antiquity.The Shannon system
The longest river in these islands, falling barely a hundred metres in three hundred and sixty kilometres — a chain of great limestone loughs joined by slow river, and the most important pike and coarse fishery in western Europe.The Sligo and Leitrim coast
A short coast of very large storm beaches with a shore tope fishery on it, overlooked because the county's reputation was made by its rivers and loughs rather than its sea.The Soča and Slovenia's Adriatic rivers
An isolated Adriatic drainage in the Julian Alps holding a salmonid that exists almost nowhere else — the marble trout — reduced to a handful of pure populations and rebuilt from them.The Solent and the Hampshire coast
A sheltered strait between an island and the mainland where the tide does something it does nowhere else in Britain — a double high water that holds the sea up for hours, on top of the country's busiest small-craft water.The Solway Firth
A shallow funnel between Cumbria and Dumfries with one of the largest tidal ranges in Britain over miles of flat sand, where the flooding tide crosses the ground faster than a person can walk.The Strait of Gibraltar
Fourteen kilometres between two continents, where Atlantic water flows in on the surface and Mediterranean water flows out beneath it, and where tuna have been intercepted in fixed traps for three thousand years.The Strait of Messina
A narrow channel where two seas at different levels exchange water twice a day, driving deep-sea fish to the surface and supporting a swordfish harpoon fishery of documented antiquity.
T
Tenerife
The deepest water closest to shore in the archipelago, a mountain that makes its own weather, and the centre of the Canaries' blue-water fishery.Thailand
Two coasts on two different seas, a river system draining into both, and a freshwater fishery organised in a way that exists almost nowhere else — commercial lakes stocked with the largest fish on earth.The Thames Estuary
A vast shallow funnel of mud, sand and moving bank between Essex and Kent, biologically dead within living memory and now one of the most productive nursery systems in north-west Europe. The recovery is the record.
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W
The Wadden Sea
Five hundred kilometres of tidal flat behind a chain of barrier islands, running across three countries: the largest unbroken intertidal system on earth and the nursery for a very large share of the southern North Sea.The Wash and the Lincolnshire coast
England's largest embayment: four rivers, an enormous drying sandflat, the country's biggest shellfishery and a nursery for a substantial share of the southern North Sea's flatfish.The Waterford coast
A bass and surf coast whose best documentation is a list of what is NOT caught there — no whiting in Whiting Bay, painted ray but no thornback, and a back strand that is not bass ground.The Welsh coast and Anglesey
A long, varied coast whose defining feature is water speed: the tidal races off Anglesey and the headlands are among the fastest water fished from the shore anywhere in Britain, and they organise both the fishing and the risk.The Welsh sewin rivers
The sea trout rivers of west and south-west Wales, fished almost entirely in the dark, with their own tackle, their own literature and — on one of them — a licensed net fishery worked from coracles within living memory.The West African coast
A coast of surf beaches, lagoons and river deltas where one of the world's great canoe fisheries works water that upwelling makes extraordinarily productive — and where distant fleets have been fishing it for decades.The Western Balkans
Limestone rivers of extraordinary clarity, three ancient lakes, and the densest cluster of endemic salmonids in Europe — inside a region where fisheries law is written below the national level and the fish are older than the borders.The western Indian Ocean coast
A warm reef and mangrove coast running from the Horn of Africa to the Mozambique Channel, where a monsoon-sailed dhow fishery is being joined by flats, reef and offshore angling.The Wexford coast
The county where the discovery of smooth-hound in numbers turned a run of featureless east-coast surf beaches into destinations, and the richest shore documentation in Ireland.West Cork
Three Atlantic peninsulas and, round the corner from them, a run of shallow estuaries where the statutory guide names gilthead bream and golden grey mullet as ordinary shore species.Weymouth Bay
The water east of Portland, sheltered from the prevailing south-westerly by the peninsula that makes Chesil dangerous — which is why Weymouth is a working angling port and Chesil is a storm beach.
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The Yorkshire coast
Hard rock in the north, the fastest-eroding coast in Europe in the south, and the two joined by a chalk headland that sorts them. One coast that is three fisheries because it is three geologies.The Yucatán and Mexican Caribbean coast
A flat limestone shelf with no rivers on it, a barrier reef along its edge, and shallow lagoons behind — which together produce one of the few places on earth where a bonefish, a tarpon, a permit and a snook can be caught in one day.
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