This is a true sea angling adventure story written by 13-year-old Jason Sillence from Bexhill. He had the chance to fish in northern Norway from the boat and shore with his cousin Stan who's Dad runs a charter boat in the Lofoten Islands.

Way Up North
I was really looking forward to my trip to Norway with my young cousin Stanley Hearn, who's nine, as we were going on a fishing holiday with his Dad Nigel, who runs a charter boat and has caught lots of European Line Class records.
My first day in Norway I was on my own, as a mix up over passports meant young Stan would have to follow on the next day. The evening I got there, the sight of a massive cod Nigel had caught earlier in the day, weighing 50lb, greeted me. It was nearly as big as me!
My first full day was spent on a charter trip with a party of Germans and Nigel found them some cod up to 30lb. That evening we picked up Stan from the airport so the serious fishing could begin.
On Shore
Our first trip to the shore was the next evening as Nigel had another charter party during the day during which his crew had caught some more nice cod to 47lb.
As soon as he had tidied the boat we set off to a mark he had fished before that had produced a European dab record and he had heard recent reports of a plaice weighing nearly seven pounds. Using herring as bait we both cast out a single hook paternoster about 30 metres and were both into cod straight away. We had Nigel running about like he'd been stung by a bee. The fish had to be pulled up the jetty gently and it was low tide but in two hours we caught over 50lb of fish with cod to 8lb and coalfish to 7lb.
Day By Day
We spent the next few days fishing the boats and shore with a couple of days off to go skiing and sledging. One trip to the shore we took a German boy with us who had had a bad day on the boats. We didn't catch much until nearly 10 o'clock in the evening then the fish suddenly went mad. We had 30 fish between the three of us with all the rods bent at the same time. There were plenty of cod and a couple of very nice coalfish for a total of 90lb of fish. These came in less than two hours fishing, as we had to stop at 11.45pm because it got too cold. Next day we spent in the mountains skiing, enjoying a picnic, finishing up with a pizza in a pub
Last Trip
Our last day was to be another on the boat and Nigel was keen to have a go at redfish near the island of Skova. We started fishing a gully under the lighthouse where fish were seen on the sounder at 152mts. We went down with prawns and herring and some small Gummi-macs. Nigel was using 6kg line as he was hoping for a line class record but we had heavier tackle on. He pulled up some vassild, a big eyed, heavily scaled fish I'd not seen before. We drifted into shallower water of about 80mts and Stan and I started catching tusk up to 10lb. At the top of the bank we started catching some nice haddock to about four pounds so Nigel switched to his 2kg line and hooked a tusk of nearly seven pounds that broke the European Line class record. It was hard work winding up when we were in water to 160mts deep, but we both caught our first ever vassild, haddock and tusk and Nigel had got himself another record so it made a good finish to our trip. I hope to Stan and Nigel will invite me again next year as I still want to catch a 20lb cod, if not there's always plenty of fun to be had in the snow.