About Us... Martyn Skoyles

The main web designer for Hooked on Websites, I’m an experienced user of html code, Dreamweaver and Flash as well as being a passionate angler for a number of years.  

I suppose with a dad as fishing mad as mine it was only natural that I would follow in his footsteps, and some of my earliest childhood memories are of sitting watching a float. Those were days filled with impossible to untangle bird nests, regularly casting into the trees and bushes and occasionally catching the odd suicidal perch or roach (Not much has changed really!)

By the time I was around 10 years old, the fishing bug had really started to take over and most weekends I would be out fishing with dad somewhere. By this time I wanted to do more than just float fishing for anything that came along, and began badgering my dad to take me fishing for different species I’d not caught before. We had a great few years, with him teaching me how to target and catch carp, tench, bream and pike from local lakes, as well as my first ever barbel and chub on our river sessions.  

Then as I was doing my GCSE’s and A Levels I really started to settle into my carp fishing, spending most of my weekends after the species as well as a couple of week long trips a year to venues in France. The fishing was great and I was lucky enough to catch my first English thirty, as well as some huge carp and catfish on the French trips.    

During the three years I spent at University my fishing tended to take place just in the holiday periods between terms at Christmas, Easter and summer, with carp, pike and barbel being my main targets depending on the weather. At this point I began to become seriously interested in computing, and in particular web design, completing a number of courses in the subject. 

Having finished University I worked as a journalist at Angling Times for seven months, writing a number of pieces for both the carp and news sections of the paper. Throughout this time I also featured twice on the Tight Lines program on Sky Sports, filming segments on catching carp off the top and also in the middle of winter.     

These days I’m enjoying a bit of variety in my fishing again, spending plenty of time after carp but also going for barbel and chub occasionally as well as pike and perch during the colder months.