A teenage fisher from the Isle of Man will be travelling to Aberdeen next month with her family, to find out whether she has won the prestigious Fishing News Trainee Fisherman of the Year Award.

Isla Gale is one of five young fishers on the shortlist but she is not the only female: Mollie Smart, from Poole in Dorset is also on the list along with three young men. All of them fish in different parts of the British Isles.

With awards in 10 categories this year, the Fishing News Awards 2022 recognise outstanding achievement across all areas of the UK and Irish commercial fishing industry in 2021.

Seventeen-year-old Isla has been going out fishing in the summers with her dad, Luke Corkill, since she was 12.

Isla says: ‘I begged my mum to let me go out to sea with him.’

After leaving school, she moved on to the Shannon Kimberley RY 169. Fishing for scallops, Isla spends half the year fishing from the Isle of Man, and the other half on the west coast of Scotland. She says her friends all support her choice of career, but ‘none of them would do it themselves’.

Luke expressed the family’s delight at her nomination saying: ‘I am absolutely over the moon for her.’