Thanks to the good people at Hitwise we’re able to accurately rank the top 10 best fishing websites in the UK for the last year, ranked by visitor numbers (popularity).
With our sport being so diverse it’s interesting to look how the top 10 splits out. We’ve added our own categorisation of each to spell it out. We’ve made a few observations from this.
WorldSeaFishing.com is the top fishing website by traffic and is the only sea fishing site in the top 10 so it’s fair to say they have gobbled up a lot of share. Maybe this is because they have diversified so much with a strong editorial magazine, a very strong forum and now an online shop.
We were surprised by how many game fishing / fly fishing websites were in the top 10. Perhaps wrongly, we still think of game fishing as perhaps the most exclusive discipline in our sport – clearly there are a lot of fly fisherman active online.
Both FishPal.com and CemexAngling.co.uk offer venue services, actually making fishing easier for their users.
Orvis is the only manufacturer/brand to make the top10 and JohnNorris.co.uk is the only dedicated shop.
Despite a fair bit of negative comment by some of the traditional angling press, it’s clear that fishing forums are as popular and well visited as they’ve ever been.
If you have your own observations, we’d be glad to hear them. Just add your thoughts in the comments box below.
- www.worldseafishing.com [sea] [forum] [magazine] [shop]
- www.fishpal.com [game] [service]
- www.flyforums.co.uk [game] [forum]
- www.anglersnet.co.uk [mixed] [magazine] [forum]
- www.carpforum.co.uk [carp] [forum]
- www.orvis.co.uk [game] [shop] [manufacturer]
- www.cemexangling.co.uk [coarse] [carp] [service] [forum]
- www.gofishing.co.uk [mixed] [magazine] [forum]
- www.johnnorris.co.uk [game] [shop]
- www.trawlerphotos.co.uk (think this is an anomaly of the ‘fishing’ category!)