Ian Lindsay

Location: Fife, Scotland

I'm a journalist with the Dundee morning paper, The Courier, and also The Sunday Post. For something like 15 years I wrote a weekly sea angling column for The Courier's sister paper, The Evening Telegraph

Personal bests

Common skate 205lb; tope 38lb; Pollack 11lb 13oz; cod 10lb 9oz; starry smooth hound 12lb; conger 20lb 8oz; spurdog 14lb 8oz; black bream 3lb 5oz; gilthead bream 1lb (but I only had an hour to catch one!).

Most memorable fishing event

I don't do competitions much but was once runner-up in the North of Scotland Sea Angling Championship at Scrabster... I even finished ahead of a certain Stevie Souter! Pleasure trip-wise, I fished a sea loch, and as we set off I was thinking 'We've got three days, perfect weather and tides, this is gonna be great.' In the bar that night I mulled over my catch of seven doggies, wishing I'd stayed home! Yet 10 minutes into day 2, I was into a 185lb skate then a 20lb plus conger and suddenly it was all looking better.third day I added a PB spurdog of 14lb 8oz and two more skate to 154lb. So quite a weekend!

Favourite angling style

Give me a spinning rod and a collection of squidgy and/or shiny objects to tie on the end and I'm happy as a pig in muck. I also love float fishing.

Other interests

Family, football (if you can call East Fife that), cinema, dark video games like Gears of War and Resident Evil.

Angling hopes/ambitions

To catch a coalfish large enough to make me forget the half-pounders that have plagued me all my life.

Best piece of advice/tip

Try to arrange boat trips when the conditions are right, not a week on Thursday. Most of my near-death experiences have arisen due to such arrangements! It's also why when the skipper says 'you should've been here yesterday' he is NOT joking.

I bet you didn't know

My first common skate was 205lb, and the angling press were so impressed by the sad tale of a numpty who'd been skate fishing nine times without a bite beforehand that when I entered it for comps in the Sea Angler, Angler's Mail, Angling Times and Daily Record, it won the lot.

Angling media/tackle involvement

I wrote the column mentioned earlier forever, and during that time my schmoozing with the tackle trade got me two free books and a box of Mustad Easylinks.

What would go in angling's Room 101?

The section of the Askari catalogue full of Germans in check shirts and  ponchos. Oh, and the Grauvell BRV reel. Take it to bits, yes, but just you try putting it back together!

Heroes and influences

My old pal Bill Dodds used to be a commercial and taught me lots about watercraft; Davy Holt, who is just a great guy who showed me how to catch (and care for) common skate; Ronnie Campbell and Ian Burrett for being great skippers; and finally another good pal, Doug Kinnaird, who has pointed out the bleeding obvious to me so many times and revolutionised my success rate as a result.