Origins of Passion  

Andy Alsop was born in 1968 at Barry Hospital and raised in the town of Rhoose just 5 miles from Barry Island where the only significant fishing scene was hunting for average sized Cod in the winter season. Growing up in such a coastal region, it was only natural that Andy developed a likeness towards fishing, both offshore and inshore. Commercial fishing at that time involved much different and much more naive regulations compared to those in the modern day. Andy recollects holidaying in 1980 to Loue, a small south coast town in Cornwall, and being taken by his father to view the sharks that were caught, killed, and hung up in the marina to be weighed. Little did this commercial scene care for the impact that this sharking caused. Lacking such technological marvels like the internet, Andy understood through reading fishing magazines and reports that sharking was virtually on its knees in the early days. With his father engineering and fixing competitive speed boats at the time, Andy became familiar with life on the water quite easily. Travelling to destinations such as in Cornwall, the father and son would regularly dedicated time to offshore fishing, adapting their speed boats by just removing an engine.  

Academics never kept Andy focused and in the end he never did too well with his results at the completion of secondary school, likely because throughout his early adolescence, Andy committed intense training hours to a boxing gym. Hailing from a family of boxers where his father and uncle competed for Wales, Andy and his cousin became national champions, which gave the young lads a sense of pride and perspective whilst representing their country. After finishing school at the age of 16, a summer job helping the groundsmen at Sully Hospital in the Vale of Glamorgan, Wales, kept him content. Staying on this course, Andy worked his way up to a full-time position resulting in over two decades of experience working with psychiatric patients, for which he really enjoyed, proven by the fact he still sees some of the patients to this day. During his long service at Sully, he had become acquainted with his future wife who went to Sully. She worked in the medical ward as a dental hygienist.  

Entering early adulthood, Andy found his place with a fishing group who ventured out of Plymouth, often heading out on the famous boat Electric Blue, skippered by Tony Allen. Once holding the Conga Eel record, Tony Allen is a very well-known name among offshore anglers in the UK. Fishing out of Cornwall was always a decent day out however it attracted tourists as the general customer base. As a result, charters, for example out of Loue, prioritised later start times and hence a less valuable fishing experience averaging one shark every six or seven trips. 

Both Andy and his dad fished on the Electric Blue until Tony took his fishing prestige across the seas to America in 1996. Andy understood that to do the skippering job properly, one would need to follow in the footsteps of a great, such as Tony Allen. Having developed fishing knowledge that had already been practiced and refined on the Electric Blue, Andy and his father decide to purchase their first fishing boat in 1997. They travelled to Ireland and came back with a Hellraiser O'Sullivan Marine HR22, which they kept in Loue for the year. In 1998, they moved it to Milford Haven where it remained for private use until 2001. Andy described this investment as the key to unlocking shark fishing in Milford Haven, where they were catching more Blue Sharks than anywhere in the UK, averaging 7,8 or 9 a trip. In 2001, Andy sold the Hellraiser and bought an Osprey 26, a bigger and faster fishing boat. He decided to name this boat White Water, which fittingly reflected the rougher conditions out of Milford Haven where Andy fished. The name White Water also poked fun at a fellow fisherman called Graham who used to panic when seeing white water in rough seas.  

For Andy's journey through life, he had always planned to remain working full time at the hospital and run a fishing charter on the side at weekends and in the holidays. Despite after working at Sully up until 2001, when it closed down, and then being transferred to Barry Hospital, working for a further 3 years, Andy realised that his he was actually turning a lot of customers away from White Water Charter fishing trips, as he prioritised his availability towards his full time career. Met with this decision, Andy left his job at Barry Hospital in 2003 and became a full-time charter skipper.

Origins of Success  

Following Andy's commitment into becoming a charter skipper in 2003, White Water Charters became fully booked for the next 12 months. Business was in fact booming. Andy ultimately lived for fishing, so this new career timetable was an ideal situation. In other words, he had no regrets. Through his lessons learnt from Tony Allen, Andy knew that the primary method to catch more sharks was to spend more time fishing for them. Of course, the only way to do this was to get a faster boat which meant he did, in truth, need a bigger boat. Eventually ending with a customised Cheetah Marine, dubbed White Water 2, this investment allowed for a maximum speed of 35 knots, compared to the top speed of 23 knots from the previous Osprey26. 

Andy described the Cheetah having turned the game of shark fishing, as its power allowed for considerably more time on the water. Success ensued as White Water continually broke the record for most Blue Sharks caught in a day starting with a 50 in 2011. This attracted the attention of a Dr Phil Williams who recorded a podcast with Andy talking about the whole shark fishing scene out of Milford Haven. You may find such podcast aswel as other fishing episodes at https://www.fishingfilmsandfacts.co.uk/. White Water then went on to handle 70, 78, 88 and then 96 sharks in one day, breaking record after record. Despite this, Andy found an issue. Half the part of fishing was the waiting game, and that essence had wholey disappeared. Andy realised that it was now time to broaden White Water's horizons and look for different fish. Researching into Porbeagle Shark migration routes, they started catching more of them more often. The targeted species changed again once the Mako Sharks began appearing in large numbers in British waters. White Water regularly saw multi species catches which was not common at all. At the end of the day, all the evidence is there to say that Andy Alsop is the greatest shark fishing skipper there ever has been in the UK. Even national associations recognised Andy's success after White Water cleared over 75% of trophies and commendations at the Great Britain Fishing Show. Cordially, he was not invited to following shows as they thought he was doing 'too much'.

Focusing so much time and hard work to this shark fishing craft, White Water Charters claimed a vast collection of records with Andy at the wheel. In 2005, they broke the British Record Blue Shark with a beast of 214lbs. Five years later, they broke this record once more with a 222lbs Blue Shark. In 2013, a crew aboard White Water reeled in a 300lbs Porbeagle Shark. Within the same year a White-Water charter caught a 194lbs Mako Shark, which was the first caught in British waters in over 40 years. Andy Griffiths achieved a world record with the first registered shark slam (three shark species each over 100lbs in one day), which has only ever been done once in California and once in New Zealand since. Over Covid, White Water held a proposed British Record Thresher Shark. Andy Griffiths also caught the first targeted tuna which was around 300lbs. I say 'targeted' because the award for the very first caught tuna recorded from British water belongs to Chris Betts.  

in 2015, Andy, Chris Betts, and John Beck (my father) went shark fishing however Chris Bett (refusing to hand the rod over) ended up hooking up to and catching a 500lbs Blue Fin Tuna. The fight lasted hours and the fish had pulled White Water a distance of 7 miles before finally tiring. This catch foreshadowed White Waters later success in tuna fishing which has since left shark fishing in the dust. At that time tuna were unheard of nevertheless Andy Alsop was already at the top of this domain. As soon as targeting these tuna was legalised, White Water got to work with catching tuna less than 300lbs a rarity. To date, the largest tuna that White Water has had the pleasure of catching is a giant 935lbs, which at the time was the largest official tuna recorded in British waters. The methods and gear to catch tuna is a whole other barrel of fish compared to that used to catch the sharks, resulting in Andy forging his own range of rods called the 'Blue Dog', which as a prototype managed to catch the first tuna of a trip. Through White Water Charters, Andy has worked with research teams from the University of Exeter and Swansea University, catching and tagging big tuna for data collection and analysis. 

The sheer success of White Water Charters has attracted some famous names throughout the years with the likes of Cerys Mathews MBE (a Welsh singer and songwriter), Shane Williams MBE (a former Welsh Rugby Union Player), Anna Ryder Richardson (a British designer and media presenter) and Stuart Cable (the drummer for the Stereophonics) having gone shark fishing with Andy. White Water as a company has also hosted event nights raising £18ooo for charities around the UK. With such clever comprehension and execution of plan, Andy sought for White Water Charters to be at the top of every form British offshore fishing game there was. Having said this, Andy simply loves the fishing more than any other angler, stating he 'could fish in a puddle and be happy', which sheds a real perspective on his true character.  

Origins of Hardship  

In recent years, Andy's family faced serious health issues with his eldest daughter undergoing operation to mend a twisted bowel. To add, his wife was diagnosed with cancer for which she went through chemotherapy lasting the complete length of 33 weeks. Despite these enduring and stressful times. During the COVID19 pandemic across the UK, charter skippers such as Andy struggled to stay afloat. Initially, harbours and barges, including but not limited to in Milford Haven, were shut therefore there was an impossibility for offshore fishing, hence fishing charters had no way to make money. Businesses like White Water Charters succumbed to little to no amount of financial support as economically they worked back to front. In this way, skippers did not pay any taxations on their charter boats until they had profited from the cost of the boat itself. The political definition that marinas did not class as brick and mortar and the absolute lack of tax returns resulted in no entitlement to grants to cover lost income, with mooring fees crucifying even the smallest of charter businesses and ''Not one charter skipper got any money'' during this period. 

Later in the year 2020, once lockdown regulations had eased slightly, the barges reopened however only anglers from non-restricted areas were able to travel out of their district and board fishing charters. Andy had to rely on the comparably small number of English groups on the boat as Wales had been classed as a restricted area at this point. Despite the circumstances, Andy found an amusing irony that people could travel to and return from Wales, making the most of the incredible offshore fishing however the Welsh had to stay minimally active as they posed the risk of spreading COVID19. Andy notes that if it were not for his wife working, White Water Charters may have not survived. 

As Andy upgraded to bigger and better boats, maintenance fees and fuel consumption only increased. To keep up with this and additional inflation such as heightened mooring fees, Andy had to increase the customer cost per trip, which started off at around £350 when White Water Charters commenced and can now be found at over £1000, depending on the trip. Competition in the business sense was never much of an issue as White Water was always at the forefront of every next big sports fishing game in UK waters, with first Blue Sharks, and then with Porbeagle Sharks, Mako Sharks, Thresher Sharks and Blue Fin Tuna to follow, respectively.