The good old days...

[steesh]

great read sam thanks.when i was a teenager i fished with Byron a few times boy could he catch fish

[mick dunn]

Theres some good storys there-cheers Mick. the one in the nuts is very good.

[sam harris]

Dove Marine.

What is now the Dove Marine Laboratory at Cullercoats, and now owned by Newcastle University used to be an aquarium open to the public many years ago. As you walked into the entrance hall there used to be a big pool in the middle of the floor. This pool was only about eighteen inches deep but there were some big plaice in it, fish of 3, 4 even 5 to 6 lbs. There were no pay kiosks or anything because it was free to get in. We used to sneak in with a short piece of line with a hook attached, a small piece of ragworm or a limpet heart, drop this into the pool and within seconds you would have a good plaice on. The idea then was to get out as quick as possible before you were caught, happy days, it was better than standing on the rocks getting cold and wet.
A lot of years ago at Amble some of the commercial boats used to take anglers wrecking. One of these boats had a party out one day, now the boat had a very low gunwale and the nets were piled all along one side, and the top of the nets were a bit higher than the side of the boat. The skipper decided to try another wreck and we were all told to pull our lines in. When we asked how long it would take to the other wreck the skipper said "about half an hour". One of the lads lay down on top of the nets at the side of the boat and fell asleep. About 15 minutes later another one of the charter boats crossed our bows and the swell that this created made our boat roll around. This caused "sleeping beauty" to fall overboard into the sea. After we managed to get him back on board the skipper put it out on the radio what had happened with the suggestion the he had, "had a wet dream."
I was in Finland working for a Finnish T.V. company filming a series on angling in Europe. We were taking part in the Finnish/Swedish Salmon Trolling Championships out of Helsinki. The idea was that we went out into the Baltic and trolled for salmon and sea trout, nothing else could be weighed in. I had been made a member of the Finnish National team for some reason, I couldn't even speak the language. Whenever I went across I always used to take a few bottles of whisky, brandy, gin etc. for the lads,because drink across there is very expensive, the cheapest bottle of whisky, and I mean cheap is between £35 and £40, so they were always glad to see me. On the first day of the competition I had taken my bag with all of the drinks in it with me to hand out, I put this into the boat I was in and forgot about it. We made our way out of port into the Baltic, we were nearly into Estonia before we started our drift. There was a heck of a swell running and the cameraman and sound engineer ended up flat on their backs in the cabin, end of filming. At this point I remembered the bottles and asked if anyone wanted a drink "Oh ja" was the reply. Before I realised what was going on the three other members of the crew had a bottle in their hands and within minutes had drunk them and started on another one each. Half an hour later they were rolling all over the place and singing dirty songs, at least I think they were dirty songs because they were in Finnish. I was the only one sober, being teetotal. I didn't know where the hell I was, I started calling on the radio for someone to give me directions back to the harbour at Helsinki the problem was I couldn't find anyone that spoke English, and I only knew one Finnish word and that's "Keetos" , which means thank you, that didn't really help me. So I set off in the direction I thought I should be going and after a while I could see the harbour, when I got tied up at the quay I managed to find someone who spoke English and we somehow got the drunken bums off the boat and to the hotel which I thought they were staying at. It turned out the following morning that they hadn't been staying at the hotel at all , they had been intending to sleep on board the boat. They weren't too pleased when they got the hotel bill. Serves them right.
Sam

[bozjc]

some cracking stories there mate.
you really should get a book on the go

keep them coming

[roncoe]

Great Stuff

[Charlie_Thompson]

N1 Sam

Hope i don't sound cheeky but split the words up with paragraphs. It took me 4 hours to read that!

[sam harris]

Paragraphs.

Hi Charlie. O.K. Will do next time. Problem is I'm a one finger at a time man at typing, so I do my best. Sam.

[sam harris]

Ireland.

Angling has been very good to me, it's taken me all over the world apart from the far east. But one of my favourite countries is Ireland, lovely people, beautiful scenery, great fishing.
I went across to Westport, County Mayo with a journalist from the Angling Times a few years ago. With us were a couple of lads from the North East who had won the trip through a competition I had run on Radio Newcastle. The plan was that we would stay a couple of nights at the Helm Hotel on the quayside at Westport (the owner Vinny Keogh has his own charter boat), then to go out to Clare Island for two or three nights.
Clare Island is about 17 miles off the coast and the next stop is America.
On the first night on the Island we got the taxi, which is a tractor with a big bucket type thing that you stand in on the back, honest, along to the hotel for a drink.
Myself and one of the lads decided about midnight that we had ,had enough, so we walked the quarter mile back to where were stayng.
The guy from the Angling Times left to come back at about one o'clock on his own.
Now he was sleeping downstairs, he had a room to himself and had expressed the wish that he had a woman to share it with him (dirty little devil).
The skipper Francis Clark, Norman Dunlop from the Irish Tourist Board, the crewman Tom and a couple of local chaps and the other prize winner made their way back about three in the morning, stopping for a kebab on the way, the shop doesn't open till two in the morning.
They were all a little "merry", and walking back along the cliff top one of the lads tripped over a sheep that had been lying asleep in the middle of the road, they decided to bring it back to the digs with them, so picking the poor thing up they carriied it.
When they got back one of them said let's take it in with us, which they did, deciding the sheep didn't like kebabs they thought lets put it in, (I'm not going to mention his name as he still writes for an angling magazine and I don't want to get hit for telling the truth), so and so's room, he said he "wished he had a female to share it with him."
His door was opened and the sheep was pushed in, about a minute later all hell broke loose, the sheep had jumped on ----s bed he woke up screaming, they must have heard him on the mainland. In his panic he couldn't find the light switch so he didn't know what this "thing" was.
We could hear him falling over things, furniture being knocked over, he's still screaming, hammering on the walls trying to find the door. We by this time were having hysterics. Eventually he managed to find the light switch, when we went into his room you would think a bomb had hit it there was broken furniture, his clothes were scattered all over. But, the worst part was the sheep had s--t every where, on his clothes, on his bed, on him, I swear some of it was his though.
He didn't speak to us for two days afterwards, I don't know why.
Tight Lines, Sam.

[Topfly]

pmsl

[bozjc]

hahaha thats a good one!

im the guy that always gets in trouble for coming up with mad ideas like that lol

[Rayo]

The rod that blanked must have been gutted id imagine

[kela66]

please keep them coming sam .top tales

[Kev1n]

I was having a sift through my old fishing stuff today and found this from October 86....

Thats some fishing....

I remember fishing that match and was just along the beach from Chris. He was on the corner of a sandbank casting and the heading back to his box to bait up a spare trace ready for his next cast. I also remember that I was disappointed at having a poor night relative to the winners. Now I’m left wondering just how disappointing it was; was it no23 levels of disappointment?

[Topfly]

N1 Sam

Hope i don't sound cheeky but split the words up with paragraphs. It took me 4 hours to read that!

Did you not realise Ell, It was written for radio

[canman]

Cheers Jim, wondered where it had gone there for a moment!

As you can probably tell, I've nowt better to do today than have a bit of a rummage! Here's Whitley Bay's prizewinners from 1979 - left to right as best as I remember:

Arthur Smeaton, Tony Taylor, Alan Boomer, Brian Martin, Meself, Chris Stringer, Garry Daglish, John Nixon, Billy Gellender, Terry Patterson, Jackie Young and...?? - memory fails on the last face - anyone recognise him?

The guy that's on the end is Ken Mole, I think his son fishes in Tynemouth club.