Ron, above:
"Bill Warren was one of the most succesful Avon Anglers. He ran a little guest house in Christchurch. Pete Stone and several of his frinds stayed with Bill quite often.
As you say Paul Bill, was a leger man and one of the first people of that time to use a fibreglass rod, much to the disgust of many of his contemporaries."
Yes. He was quite something, Ron. The man who taught me much of my coarse-fishing when I was a five- to twelve-year-old tiddler was another West Drayton man, Jimmy Hoare (81 if still with us -- he was last Christmas), who worked in the 1950 and '60s in the parks and gardens department of WD Urban District Council (now part of the London Boro' of Hillingdon), whereas my Dad did summat in its offices.
Jimmy was one heck of a fisher -- in the Walker-mould I believeed as a kid. But then, in a conversation that we had in the 'Load of Hay' pub in Hillingdon nearly a decade ago (I saw this old fella looking at me chatting and catching up with a former girlfriend of mine ... then he suddenly introduced himself...), I learned that his real heroes were Bill and Sonny ... who took barbel from the Colne at Yiewsley and West Drayton (Thorney Weir) in the 1930s (?) that were the talk of the river... But that these brothers were a mere shade of the two greats who went before them -- 'Bendigo' a retired Victorian bare-knuckle prizefighter, and a local man, Harry Barnett...
Harry Barnett...
Clunk!
When I reached my 18th birthday, thirty years ago, my local tackle-dealer since I was 5- or 6-years-old, Jack Harrigan (respectful 'Salaams' to you, Jack, great fisher -- how I wish you had not struck out of that near-20-pound barbel on the Avon below Salisbury as I looked on in the summer of 1971), a man who had also taught me much, had been persuaded by my Dad and a mutual friend, **** Smith, to part with one of his Cooper-cased fish -- "for the lad's birthday". He did, a 'mere' "snotty" of around 6 pounds...
That Cooper case is beside me as I write. On its bow-front is written the following:
-BREAM-
Caught by Harry Barnett in the Colne at Uxbridge Point, Aug' 21st 1906
Bendigo, Barnett, the Warrens, Jimmy Hoare, Walker, outer London rivers, other rivers...
History, innit?