We'd moved to wales for one week and I decided to go and see what was around. I was eight years old at the time and I'd been stuck indoors for the previous week, (suffering torrential rain syndrome.)I'd walked down the road that led from our house to find a "meandering" river around the next corner. I ran the whole of the way back home and shouted to my sister that there was a river down the road. We cut two nut stick from the tree in our garden attached some fishing line "pinched from father" and went and caught some minnow. Rain came back for three weeks after that and I wasn't allowed to go fishing, then my Birthday came. I opened a long present from Mum and Dad first "a fluorescent orange shakespeare spinning rod with reel and accessories" (my eyes nearly popped out of my head) then my next present from my Grandad, (Hardies book of fishing) "what a combination". I improved my fishing rapidly and learned how to get the chub that frequented the river feeding. it was in the early eighties and I was ten or eleven at the time. I was a member of the Angling Times (Rod Bender's club) "remember that?" and just about that time I remember picking up the weekly issue of AT from the local village shop. My eyes were fixated on the front cover as I went home. Some bloke was posing with a monster on the front page. The article said that a New Britsh Record carp had been caught at a place called Redmire Pool. I asked my Dad if he'd take me carp fishing and I was hooked.
That fellow on the front page of the Angling Times sparked something inside of me that would never go out, I had a burning desire to catch one of those creatures and that desire still burns inside of me to this day. The fellow on the cover of Angling Times became my Idle and I vowed that one day I would go fishing with him. I wrote to Jimmy Saville to see if he'd grant me my wish, without reply. But that never dissheartened me and I suppose that I still live in the hopes of one day being able to have a chat with Chris Yates, who knows maybe even wet a line with him. For me though that was how it all came about.
What turned you into a fisherman?
That fellow on the front page of the Angling Times sparked something inside of me that would never go out, I had a burning desire to catch one of those creatures and that desire still burns inside of me to this day. The fellow on the cover of Angling Times became my Idle and I vowed that one day I would go fishing with him. I wrote to Jimmy Saville to see if he'd grant me my wish, without reply. But that never dissheartened me and I suppose that I still live in the hopes of one day being able to have a chat with Chris Yates, who knows maybe even wet a line with him. For me though that was how it all came about.
What turned you into a fisherman?