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Print versionThe Alderney Grand Slam!
I get around a bit and I get to see lots of different tackle shops – the good, the bad and the ugly, and the one thing that strikes me as similar with most is that, although the better ones have to run a good business to attract anglers, many do not have to promote their local angling to attract anglers in the first place. This is not so for Alderney and Mark Harding’s shop - Alderney Angling.
Fancying a lifestyle change some four years ago, Mark was holidaying on the island of Alderney when he decided to purchase the shop, Alderney Angling, which at the time was a business that was struggling. With Mark now at the helm of Alderney Angling, things have quickly changed! Since it’s rebirth, Alderney Angling now offers a modern tackle and sports shop, with a tackle van that visits the harbour each morning (to service the large charter fleet visiting from the UK) and the shop now features a seriously well-stocked mail order facility. All prices are influenced by the island’s VAT free status and are competitively priced!
As they say, behind every great man is a great woman, and in Mark’s case this is true! Fieona, Mark’s better half, runs an angling centred B+B above the shop called the Fishermans Rest and takes care of the tackle sales when Mark is busy - obviously when Mark does the tackle van at silly o’clock in the morning, but also most afternoons as he will usually be found coaching novice and junior anglers from Braye Harbours breakwater! It’s good to see an angling business putting back into fishing what they get out of it!
Having visited Guernsey on many occasions during the last decade, I never felt a pull to visit Alderney until Mark launched the Alderney Angling website with its regularly updated news/catch pages. When at home on the mainland, Mark’s news reports soon become my own lifeline to keeping updated with the fishing around the Channel Islands. Being the only angling shop and the main angling business proprietor on Alderney, Mark quickly understood that not only did he have tackle and bait to supply but in purchasing Alderney Angling, he had also become the island’s angling manager and he has welcomed this with open arms.
In life it’s the extra things that matter and it’s the extra things that turn my head. Not only do Mark and Fieona make a great team running a top angling shop and B+B, they also go the extra mile entertaining their guests! Guests of the Fishermans Rest B+B get free use of a courtesy car, and get this – not only did I have tea and coffee making facilities by my bed, I had cans of pop, biscuits, juice and a small fridge with fresh milk! A woman’s touch! Fieona comes from a background of catering and her breakfasts can only be described as a ‘full’ full English! Alderney Angling can also offer boat bookings, guided shore fishing and hire tackle for those who wish to try their hand at rock hopping rather than visit one of the islands many fabulous pubs! I’m sure if they had a tackle shop of the year competition, Alderney Angling and The Fishermans Rest would rate high on the leader board, if not first. It’s not hard to see why some stand out in a crowd.
Alderney is not just a special place because of a good tackle shop, great food and good beer but also because of the quality of its fishing. Alderney is surrounded by an awesome marine environment including strong tidal flows, and a ridiculous number of wrecks, reefs and sandbanks which all feature in clean crystal clear waters. But this is not all... Alderney lies on an important water temperature border. Alderney lies on the northern edge of all the UK’s warm water species and lies on the southern edge of the UK’s cold water species – the best of both worlds! No less than 65 major and 24 mini species can be caught from or around this little lump of rock in the English Channel! There are always fluctuations in the size and movements of the species which migrate to and from Alderney, and no two years are ever the same, but in general the fishing is normally better and more consistent than on this side of the channel. I look at the Channel Islands as a housing estate. You get rough estates, working class estates and posh estates, and of course various people and, in similar fashion, most fish will always choose to live in on the best estate they can afford! Posh Fish hey! The Channel Islands are closer to many of the better mid-channel wrecks. The sandbanks that surround the Islands are famous for their turbot and brill. For fun there is always enough bream and tope to keep any man happy, not mentioning 84 other species. But in this day and age Alderney is becoming very famous for bass.
My visit to Alderney was actually a charter holiday with one of the first skippers to visit the Islands some 30 years ago, Colin Dukes and his boat Smuggler 5. Colin used to travel to and from the Island from his old port of Exmouth but has now moved his charter operation to Alderney to take advantage of what is undoubtedly the best fishing in the UK. It also makes good business sense – fuel on Alderney is cheaper and anglers will be able to fly on and off the island rather than slogging across the channel if visiting with a British charter boat. This will suit anglers who don’t want rough crossings or want to avoid wreck fishing on route. Whilst with Colin, we had great fishing over wrecks, reefs and sandbanks for many species but one of the highlights of my first trip to Alderney was some inshore small boat fishing with Mr Alderney Angling himself, Mark Harding. My target species with both Colin and Mark being turbot, brill and bass...
If you visit Alderney you will soon hear about the Alderney Grand Slam! A specimen hunter’s challenge whereby any angler who catches the magic three fish – a turbot, a brill and a bass can either be credited as either a very skilful, or a very lucky angler. The number one sought species in the UK now has to be bass, and rightly so. They’re a damn site prettier than cod and there comes no better place to catch them than Alderney. Alderney’s coastline is rough and rugged. Rough terrain paired with screaming tides create the perfect habitat for bass. Around the Island there must be more sandbanks than in the rest of the UK put together, so it isn’t rocket science to see why these waters are the most famous place to catch a turbot or brill. This is not fishing for the faint hearted!
Alderney offers some of the best angling in the UK and the Island is definitely the best place to visit if you’re seeking to catch a big turbot, a huge brill or a double figure bass – the holy grails of UK saltwater specimen hunters! So did I get a grand slam? Well you’ll just have to wait and see next month’s issue of Boat Fishing Monthly magazine (on sale the third Friday in September). Anyway Alderney’s real ‘Grand Slam’ is the angling businesses that operate there – Mark and Fieona’s Alderney Angling, The Fishermans Rest bed & breakfast, and the British charters skippers; including Colin Dukes and his boat Smuggler, who work hard to discover and promote Alderney’s Angling on a daily basis.
LINKS
- Alderney Angling
- Colin Dukes, Smuggler, Deep Sea Pages
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