The Geoffrey Bucknall Interview

Geoffrey Bucknall

I thought it might be interesting to put a few questions to my old friend, Geoffrey Bucknall, who I have known for more than 30 years, writes Colin North.

Geoff is now 80 years of age, and lives in Barnard Castle, where he moved to a couple of years ago, having finally persuaded his wife Valerie to move. He was born in Kent, and lived most of his life in that county, although as a child, he resided in open Kent countryside, and he spent most of his married life in the Bromley area, a much more suburban part of Kent.

Geoff speaks several languages, including, to my knowledge, French, Spanish, German and a basic Russian dialect.

He has been well published over the years by fishing media and has contributed articles to various magazines and publications. He currently provides regular articles for Fly Fishing and Fly Tying Magazine. He is a regular contributor to the Fly Dressers Guild Magazine.

These were some of the questions I put to him, and his responses:-

Tell me about your early angling days in Kent?

“I wrote my autobiography, ‘Fishing Days’ in 1966. It described my early fishing life in the Weald, Romney Marsh and elsewhere. To my surprise, it has become a classic for collectors so I have written a sequel to it, ‘Alive on a Rainy Day’ which will be a limited edition to be published in May. As it is some 200 pages, I doubt you can reproduce it all here.”

Can you tell me about some of the angling personalities that you’ve met over the years? People like Dick Walker, John Goddard and the like.

“I have been somewhat anti-social in my fishing life. I have fished occasionally with a few celebrities. They are John Goddard, Barrie Welham, Ollie Kite and I once fished on Grafham with Bob Church. Though good anglers, my regular fishing companions are unknown by the media. I have only occasionally attended Game or Country Fairs. I never fished with Richard Walker and was not in his personal circle. Our ‘distant’ relationship is accurately described in Barrie Rickard’s biography of Walker. I met him less than half-a-dozen times. I admit that had I been a better ‘mixer’ it would have enhanced my career in our Sport.”

I know you’ve written a number of angling books over the years, on different subjects, and many in the style of your recollection of earlier angling moments. How many books have you written, and are there any more in the pipeline?

“I think I have written eleven books in the UK, one in France and two part-books in the USA. The sequel to ‘Fishing Days’ will be published in May 2009. I am working now on an anthology of Post-war angling controversies of which I have found seventy plus, but there are no publishing commitments yet. That market-place is getting very tough.”

If you wrote a novel, what subject would you choose to write about?

“I lack the imagination to invent characters and events for a novel. I take pains to relate my writing to true memories and historical events. So I don’t preoccupy my mind with would-be novels, sorry.”

“I lack the imagination to invent characters”

What do you consider your finest angling achievement?

“The first good fish I caught in a small village pond was a roach of about a pound. I was invited by school friends to join their party. We cut ash-plants from the hedge and the made-up lines we bought for three-half-pence from the local shop. This redfin started my fishing life. The date was June 15th 1936. I was seven years old. I am satisfied with my fishing life. Because I was neither a social nor a competitive angler, I was always able to follow my inclinations. These last few years, the places I fish are more important than the fish themselves. I still lose good fish but the pain is now absent; I blow them a kiss.”

If you could start your angling career over again, would you change anything that you’ve done in the past? I know, for example, that you once used to do a bit of deep sea angling, and that you don’t do that any longer. Is there a particular reason?

“I gave up sea fishing when, due to an earlier recession, I had to sell my boat. I did not feel comfortable with other ‘commercial’ skippers. I have tried to model my angling philosophy on my hero, Bernard Venables, who was happy to fish for anything, anywhere. That brings contentment into one’s life. The boat was seriously damaged in someone else’s care but I spent a magical winter working with a skilled fitter to bring in some design features I had long had in mind. It was a silver lining. We raised the maximum speed from 11 knots to 22 knots. You may imagine my grief in parting later from Cygnus M, so I closed down entirely my sea fishing life. during which time I had taken her to distant banks which had never been rod-fished before. We had come close to record claims for some species; a few ounces short for the Smoothound and Red Gurnard for example. When she left me, Cygnus M was one of the best equipped angling boats. I loved to hear the inter-cooler and supercharger kick in on our new 250HP Sabre diesel and its surging power saved us from an unexpected fierce storm off Brighton. We planed in from forty miles out before the ‘Green ‘uns’ arrived to swamp other skippers’ Cockpits.”

What do you regard as the finest game fish, coarse fish and sea fish you ever landed?

“The best game fish I caught was certainly not the biggest; though it was a fine brown trout of some three pounds caught in Cow Green reservoir long after the lake had been taken over by huge numbers of stunted trout. I have a painting of it, by my good artist-friend, the late Noel Messenger, and I told him ‘don’t you dare add a millimetre to its size’. The most memorable coarse fish has to be that first roach as it has given me 65 years of angling; indeed, it decided my way of life for me. Sea fishing? I did catch a double-figure bass from the wreck of a ship in the Thames estuary. A specimen sea bass must be the most handsome trophy of all.”

I know that you have a pretty low opinion of rainbow trout, but I think that you may agree that the fulfilled a purpose and directly involved introducing a lot of new people into the sport. In addition, of course, they created something of a mini industry that caters for game fishers that want to pursue them. Has that caused you to change your opinion on this species.

“I am torn between two opinions about stocked rainbows. The levels of stocked fish were so intensive they took the challenge out of my sport, especially in the South. On the other hand, they did bring fly-fishing within the reach of those who, before the war, might have never been able to enjoy the sport. Happily, there are still enough wildernesses with wild trout to attract me, so I can make my choice whilst still recognising the contribution, which richly stocked fisheries have made to the sport.”

Would you like to explain to the readers how Sundridge Tackle evolved and became one of the largest fishing tackle wholesalers in Europe?

“Sundridge Tackle grew out of our retail fishing tackle shops, (Rod & Line.) I had quit working in immunology for the Wellcome Research Foundation for my fears that this good company would be gobbled up when the directors decided to ‘go public’. I had been obsessed with chemistry at school, but the only other thing I knew was fishing. I started in a small way by recruiting disabled folk as fly dressers. Because of my interest in languages, French firms asked me to act as their agent in the UK. Some British distributors were reluctant to buy through us, so my colleague, John Carroll and I decided to become wholesalers ourselves. I went to France to learn the fish-hook making business with VMC, and their hooks, modified for UK anglers became our winning product. Over a few days, I sat at the work bench with an elderly Quaker, a highly skilled technician, M. Billet and between us we designed the whole range of fishing hooks to be marketed by Sundridge for VMC in the UK. They went from a size 24 bloodworm hook up to a giant conger-eel hook. It gave me some pride to defend Europe against the product-tide from East of Suez.

“For a while, Sundridge may have been the largest wholesaler and manufacturer in the UK. John Carroll was a fine partner for me; he had the rare quality of designing a range of machines to replace the old hand-crafts in fishing rod manufacture. The big foreign firms then entered the market. We only had modest High Street bank resources to match the bottomless purses of these huge International Companies. Our superior manufacturing expertise was not enough. We had to close down our own production and replace it with Far Eastern imports. This reduced my usefulness to the company, so parting on good terms from two colleagues who still remain friends, I decided to take my retirement. I confess that by temperament I am not a goodbusiness person, but that is the way fate dealt me my hand of cards to play. Given a choice, I would have preferred to have had a quiet career in French literature or poetry at a good University. However, parental separation, with a little help from Nazi bombs pushed me into the role of keeping the wolf from the door. This was the common fate of many pupils from the war years. Without the fishing, I doubt not but that I would have gone long since to the cemetery or the mad house, for I was ever an escapist to river, lake or seashore.”