Fishing Holidays UK Style: Where to Reel Them In

If you’re one of the six million anglers in the UK, you’ll know that there is never enough time to indulge in your pastime. You always leave the water regretting that there wasn’t time for just one last cast. Well, why not pack your rod and lures and head out on some fishing holidays UK style?

Take a holiday on the Kentish Coast for a great sea fishing trip. Dungeness Beach is one of the most famous cod fishing beaches in the UK, and the chances of catching a double figure specimen is good. Bass fishing is also popular off the shore (experts recommend you use livebait close in for best results), along with a wide selection of flatfish.

The long shingle shore of Orford Ness in Suffolk offers some excellent sea fishing for anyone who wishes to make the short journey from Aldeburgh. Summer fishing offers a great chance to catch smoothhounds and bass, while if you brave the winter months it’s excellent for cod. Spring is the best time to try your line though with the waters full of rays, dogfish, cod, bass and sole. The fast tides mean that short range casting is the best tactic to fill your keepnet.

Much has been said about the decline of the mining industry in Wales, but the one small silver lining is that Welsh rivers that were once thick with pollution now run clear, and fish stocks are returning in massive numbers. The seventy odd miles of the River Teifi is especially prolific, with salmon and sea trout thick in its waters. Stay near Lampeter and take a special night trip to the river for best results.

Whitby has been famous for commercial fishing for generations, but the amateur sea-fisher is more than welcome in this North Yorkshire town. Rent a cottage nearby and head down to the harbour where you can either fish from the shore or hire one of the many day-boats for a trip into the North Sea on a search for cod, haddock, ling, herring and mackerel.

St Ives in Cornwall pulls in visitors year round with its chocolate box cobbled streets and quaint fishing cottages, as well as the splendid views out over the Atlantic. It’s also a great place to take a fishing holiday, anglers will be able to fish day and night and you can pluck virtually the whole menu of a traditional chippie from the ocean. Cod, haddock, mackerel, and pollock all swim in these waters.

The Norfolk coast is a delight for fishing holidays. Along with the beauty of staying in an AONB, the whole shoreline is prime angling territory. Bass congregate in the Wash in summertime, while further round the hump there are mackerel off Cromer, Overstrand is the place for dabs, flounders, and sole, and even eel and plaice at Sheringham.

If salmon and trout are your preferred quarry, then you can find some of the best fly fishing spots in the Eden Valley in Cumbria. Running between the Pennines and the Lake District, the river is famed for its beats, not just fly fishing but coarse fishing too.

The Ribble is a great destination for fishing holidays; big barbel and chub rub fins with roach, carp, trout and salmon as the river travels through villages such as Settle in North Yorkshire and Clitheroe in Lancashire.