July 1998 and the world was gripped with Internet Mania! The talk on every news channel and in every newspaper was of IPOs, Yahoo, Boo.com and anything else that had a .com or a .co.uk at the end of its name. The world was gripped with hysteria about this brand new method of communicating, a one stop network for everything any person could ever want! Realising the potential of this brand new mass publishing platform, Mike Thrussell Jnr set about work trying to persuade a sceptical Mike Thrussell Snr of the need for an internet presence and in particular a magazine style format web site dedicated to sea angling. After days of discussions and some rather heated arguments, the idea was set and the plan was formed, they would launch one of the first online magazines dedicated to sea angling...its name, Sea All The Angles.

Sea All The Angles was formed as a hobby site, something to maintain and play with at leisure but with a strong ethic of entertaining and educating a whole new world of online anglers who were just starting to use the internet. There was no business plan and there was certainly no long term plan of growth, it was organic and grew at its own pace. Initially starting as a 25 article site covering the most asked questions in sea angling, the site grew to over 100 articles by 1999.

During the summer of 1999 and with an ever increasing amount of traffic, it was decided that Sea All The Angles needed to purchase its own Top Level Domain, because Sea All The Angles was an informative site and not a business, the name sea-alltheangles.org.uk was purchased. The whole site was converted over to this new address and due to the use of a TLD Domain instead of shared free hosting, traffic levels began a steady rise.

After 9 months of steady growth in traffic and content, the Sea All The Angles domain was no longer relevant and the decision was made to move to a more angling relevant domain name, sea-fishing.com was purchased and a brand new site with more content, better photographs and a much increased international section was born. With this change, traffic began a dramatic rise and the site was now serving over 5,000 page impressions a day.

In late 2000 just as the dot com bubble was about to go pop, Sea-Fishing.com was recognised by several media outlets including the Sunday Telegraph, .net magazine and also as one of AOL’s sites of the day. In the summer of 2000 Sea-Fishing.com was also featured on ITV 1’s Web Review TV Programme, the site was reviewed by Richard Topping and he was that impressed with the content and ease of navigation that he gave the site a top rating score of 8/10.

With 2 years of steady growth behind it, Sea-Fishing.com was fast becoming one of the busiest angling sites on the internet. Much of this hard work was almost undone – due to a slight technical hitch (administrative oversight is the current phrase in vogue) regarding domain names. In December 2001 after a very busy period, somebody, who shall remain nameless, forgot to re-register the Sea-Fishing.com domain and plans were hastily concocted to try and rescue the situation. As the Sea-Fishing.com domain was about to enter its redemption period, a new name, worldseafishing.com was purchased and the site moved, in one of the quickest web site re-brands of all time. Within 2 days the site had changed design, logo, feel and name. And so, the now famous (or infamous depending on your view point), WSF (World Sea Fishing) was born!!

Realising the potential of user involvement online, World Sea Fishing launched the WSF Forum Boards in 2002. Whilst not an immediate success, the boards were kept as part of the site and slowly integrated into all aspects of the content available. Over the next year the forums steadily grew and grew and in 2003 they were becoming a popular and stable part of the World Sea Fishing site.

By 2004 all aspects of the World Sea Fishing site were growing at an extraordinary pace. Page impressions and unique visitors were climbing at a fast rate. Membership figures for the forum were growing steadily and more and more users were posting. Due to the increased cost and administrative burden of running the WSF site, it was decided in 2004 that World Sea Fishing had to become a business in its own right. On the 3rd of November 2004, World Sea Fishing was incorporated as a company to become World Sea Fishing Ltd.

In the words of Mike Jnr, 2005 and 2006 were “pretty dull” by all accounts. Most of the time was spent expanding the site in much the same vein it had expended over the previous years and a greater emphasis was placed on increasing the numbers of forum members and those who actively contribute. As Mike would explain, these were essential but pretty boring years required for the next step in the life of World Sea Fishing...

In 2007 World Sea Fishing began its tentative steps into the world of Ecommerce. Launching the World Sea Fishing shop. Initially the shop only sold World Sea Fishing specific items such as shirts, hats, fleeces and stickers. Over the year the shop expanded and secured accounts with Shakespeare, Swift International, Gemini and Ultima.

2008 and World Sea Fishing added its first regular contributors to the WSF Site after Mike Thrussell Snr. Boat Angling expert Jim O’Donnell and International Shore Angler Shaun Cumming joined the site to provide additional content in the form of blogs (the new buzz word for 2008).

2009 saw a massive expansion for the WSF Tackle Shop. It moved to its own domain in mid 2008 and in 2009 secured two of the biggest suppliers in the country, Pure Fishing and Shimano.

And so to 2010. World Sea Fishing has always tried to grow organically and sustainably. WSF has always believed that it is more a public service site and as such, always strives to make sure the site is secure and always operational, no matter what the circumstances. 2010 will see further expansion in two key areas of the site. Firstly the magazine is to be expanded once again, a fine contribution team has been assembled featuring some of the top names in sea angling who will be providing fresh, informative content for the site. In addition to this, the WSF Tackle shop will be expanded even more with a new stock control system which is integrated into the site to make buying choices and decisions even easier for our customers. The aim is to expand our product range and brands to make the WSF site the one stop place for your content, communicative and consumer needs.