BOAT anglers are anticipating another big fish season at marks in the English Channel and off the southern Ireland Atlantic coast, where bluefin tuna to over 600lb are again expected to appear in June.

This could be the year when this immense battler extends its range to Cornwall for the first time since the 1930s when many were seen and a few hooked but lost due to woefully inadequate tackle.

The first of this year's blue shark will be within 20 miles of the Cornish coast by the first week of June, and within a month may be contacted less than ten miles out. The Shark Angling Club of Great Britain, now in its 56th year, has totally embraced conservation and requires all fish to be released after being measured, from which the approximate weight is established by using a proven formula.

Very big blues, meaning fish of 150lb, were never plentiful, even in the heady days of the sport, but such catches are still possible.

The heaviest recorded by the club is the British record fish of 218lb caught six years after the club was formed, and the next heaviest of 216 ½lb was captured in the early 1980s.

Under Shark Club conservation rules, even a bigger blue could not be claimed as a record. Porbeagle shark are hoped for off Atlantic Cornwall, where contact is usually made within a mile of the coast from Trevose Head to Hartland Point.

This variety has been heavily hunted by commercial interests and the numbers fought on rod and line over the past five seasons has not been great.

A re-appearance of the much bigger Mako, which provided amazing sport in the 1960s and 1970s, culminating in fish of 500lb and 498lb caught off the Eddystone and Falmouth Bay, seems unlikely. Two examples netted in the Channel have been landed commercially at Cornish ports, so it is not entirely impossible for one to take a bait that is waiting for a blue. The contact number for shark trips is 01503 262642.

The conger season will be up and running in the coming month and rod- bending action is guaranteed at the many wrecks in Lyme Bay and further out in the vicinity of, and within the great gash of, the Hurd Deep, where the bottom plunges in the deepest part to 600 ft.

Torquay, Paignton, Brixham and Dartmouth charter skippers are ideally positioned and a 2 ½-hour run is sufficient to reach many of the known and very productive hulks.

The leading fish of last year, both coming from Lyme Bay, scaled 109½lb and 102½lb for Roger Beer of Ivybridge and John Heather of Brixham. Every big conger hunter has the ambition to break the conger record of 133lb 4oz, set at Lyme Bay wreck in 1995. The nearest is a fish of 115lb caught off Plymouth.

The British Conger Club continues to welcome new members, who are now able to join without having to bring a qualifying fish ashore for official weighing. To conserve, the skipper's judgement as to the fish's weight is deemed sufficient. A fish of 40lb is the requirement in the wreck category and 30lb from reef or open ground.

South West waters have extensive areas of reef that offer the opportunity of top-class conger fishing without the need to go more than 12 miles from the coast, and many hulks lying within this distance have eels of huge weight.

Pollack command plenty of interest at wrecks and reefs and ling are making a fair reappearance.

The South West's competition calendar includes the Conger Championships, to be fished out of Plymouth's Queen Anne Battery Marina over the weekend July 4-5, and its Affiliated Clubs Championships will be contested off Brixham on September 26-27. The Borough of Torbay Festival begins its nine-day run on September 4 .