'Sea Fishing in Dorset' ...and beyond.

[Moonyaker]

20 Years ago I and my fishing buddy each bought Hugh Stoker’s book ‘Sea Fishing in Dorset’. This now dog-eared and sun bleached purchase is an 84 page booklet that listed and described an abundance of shore and inshore fishing marks in terms of the topography and fish likely to be present with key maps for the entire Dorset Coastline between Mudeford and Lyme Regis including Poole Harbour as well as a general guide on fish and techniques.

 

It was an A5 publication bound with a couple of staples only and was the sort of thing that you would pick up from a tackle shop when buying bait etc (as indeed we did). The book cost the grand sum of £1.20 in 1986 and was first published in 1960 and ours was the 6th Impression.

 

The recent Dorset/Devon Meet thread got me thinking that discussion of where to meet on the Dorset Coast would be greatly aided by access to this book which remains our first reference point when considering alternative marks in Dorset. I had assumed that it was still readily available to those of us that are interested in such things, but from some of the comments on the forum it appeared likely that most had not seen it and a little investigation reveals good reason for this; it is out of print.

 

During my investigations, I managed to find a few used copies, (some at extortionate sums of up to £50!) in the usual places but also discovered that he wrote a whole series of ‘Sea Fishing In…’books in connection with The Angling Times covering not only the Dorset Coast but Sussex, Kent, Hampshire & The Isle of Wight, South Devon, Cornwall, North Devon & Somerset as well.

 

If the other guides are all as informative as the Dorset Book then I think that they could be of great use to all us yak fishers fishing the various coastlines concerned as they not only give guidance on the shore marks but inshore marks as well. For instance….

 

Zzippy, supporting your recent jest on St Albans Ledge he says ‘ A Rocky Ledge, very steep- to in places, extends 2 ½ miles out to sea SW of St Albans Head and there are numerous rocky ledges beyond this. The ledge is seldom fished by anglers owing to the strength of the tides and the violent race but it is the haunt of some very large Pollack and conger. This is definitely no place to fish in a dingy or small motor launch but during neap tides and settled weather it is worth visiting the area with a fair sized craft and a knowledgeable boatman’ and is shown on the Key map as ‘Danger Area’.

 

He like you and SpeciMan is not that keen on Peverill Ledge or Old Harry Rocks either!

 

Obviously I do not know whether anyone else has been using these guides and agrees that they are really useful but it was a thought that may be it was worth looking into the possibility of their being re-printed if there were sufficient interest to persuade those who hold rights to his work that this might be a worthwhile endeavour. They are fairly basic publications printwise (but not in content) and should be relatively inexpensive from a production point of view. The publishers of the copy that I have were Mill House Publications of Seatown, Bridport (likely to be the man himself) but this company does not currently come up on a Google Search. The ISBN is (was) 0 9508088 3 0. I have called the Angling Times and they have promised to come back to me but thought it likely that they would not be able to help much.

 

Does anyone have any other comments or experience of these books .The guidance may be approaching 50 years old but the content remains really useful (IMHO) and it seems a shame to me that the wisdom imparted by the book(s) is no longer widely available.

 

I should get my hands on Sea Fishing in Cornwall and Sea Fishing in South Devon over the course of the next few days and I am interested to see whether these are as comprehensive as his Dorset Book and may be able to wax lyrical about these too soon. Hugh Stoker was based in West Bay Dorset and born in 1920 and wrote other books on Sea Fishing and ‘Sea Fishing Hotspots’ is well worth a read and gives nostalgic accounts of Fishing Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Ireland & Scotland from both shore and boat; there is even a section on Porbeagles too!

 

Interested to hear others thoughts on things.