I have no idea.
No-one in my family ever fished before or since.
An Irish uncle did some [FONT="]
poaching[/FONT] trout spinning and pike plugging but I only ever met him once for an afternoon when I was about 9, had no conversation with him about fishing and he never offered to take me. Though I do seem to remember reading through an early Shakespeare tackle catalogue he had left lying around and being fascinated by the pictures of the various lures.
I just knew it was something that I wanted to do and pestered my parents until they gave me a christmas present of a completely unsuitable but absolutely loved and cherished rod and Black prince reel.
Then fuddled around entirely self-taught from what I could glean from books of the "encyclopaedia of everything you need to know about fishing" type from the local library, making a complete pigs ear of it all.
I finally I met up with a new boy at our school, Dave, recently moved into the area, who actually had some idea how to go about it (though not a great deal more than me in retrospect).
And thus began the years that the local Gudgeon still remember as the time of the terror....
Eventually graduating to catching some not too entirely unreasonable stuff. Including my first 2lb plus roach at age 14 (2lbs 2 1/2ozs to be precise)
I still remember the feeling of sitting down on the river bank shaking and staring at the top ring of the keepnet, scarcely believing what lay within. And my mate Dave bicycling 5 miles home and then 5 miles back with his Mother's balance scales and precision weights in his rucksack to weigh it absolutely precisely. You don't forget mates who come up trumps at a moment like that !
Just wish I could find the one and only photo taken at the time. But then again it lives on in memory in my inner eye for as long as I ever live.