The Southern Surfcaster will increase your knowledge of fishing and help you develop into a more confident salt-water fisherman. Explore creative techniques and the latest strategies that have transformed the sport over the last decade. Many of the old-school methods of fishing are updated for modern practicality. The Southern Surfcaster will change the way you think and what you thought you knew about salt water fishing.

"Smallbore Rifle Shooting" is essential reading for those who are considering taking up the sport, and for those who already have some experience but wish to improve their skills and participate in competitions. It takes the reader forward from the point at which the very first shot is fired, introduces new levels of understanding and competence, provides useful advice, and answers many of the questions frequently asked by beginners. The key topics, which are examined in detail, include breathing, aiming, trigger control, and "follow through." Step-by-step guidance is presented on how to build a comfortable and stable prone position while wearing a jacket and sling, and the numerous photos are include pictures taken through the sights. The author presents practice exercises that help demonstrate the different techniques. For people looking to progress beyond indoor practice shooting, there is an explanation of types of competition, how to enter events, and how to anticipate the effect of wind on a shot.

’I can’t recall us ever talking about anything other than eels and how to best catch them, down there by the stream. Actually, I can’t remember us speaking at all. Maybe because we never did.’

The European eel, Anguilla anguilla, is one of the strangest creatures nature ever created. Remarkably little is known about the eel, even today. What we do know is that it’s born as a tiny willow-leaf shaped larva in the Sargasso Sea, travels on the ocean currents toward the coasts of Europe – a journey of about four thousand miles that takes at least two years. Upon arrival, it transforms itself into a glass eel and then into a yellow eel before it wanders up into fresh water. It lives a solitary life, hiding from both light and science, for ten, twenty, fifty years, before migrating back to the sea in the autumn, morphing into a silver eel and swimming all the way back to the Sargasso Sea, where it breeds and dies.

And yet . . . There is still so much we don’t know about eels. No human has ever seen eels reproduce; no one can give a complete account of the eel’s metamorphoses or say why they are born and die in the Sargasso Sea; no human has even seen a mature eel in the Sargasso Sea. Ever. And now the eel is disappearing, and we don’t know exactly why.

What we do know is that eels and their mysterious lives captivate us.

This is the basis for The Gospel of the Eels, Patrik Svensson’s quite unique natural science memoir; his ongoing fascination with this secretive fish, but also the equally perplexing and often murky relationship he shared with his father, whose only passion in life was fishing for this obscure creature.

Through the exploration of eels in literature (Günter Grass and Graham Swift feature, amongst others) and the history of science (we learn about Aristotle’s and Sigmund Freud’s complicated relationships with eels) as well as modern marine biology (Rachel Carson and others) we get to know this peculiar animal. In this exploration, we also learn about the human condition, life and death, through natural science and nature writing at its very best.