I owe my interest in fish directly to my father, though he was more utilitarian than I would ever be about it. As kids we ate, or tried to eat perch, pike, roach and rudd; all dreadful. We would stop at bridges to look at the river beneath in the hope of seeing a fish only to have my Dad try and stun it with a handy rock. To get a pike to taste less like a pond and more like a fish we were told to marinade it in salt water over-night. When the power-lead from our electric kettle fell into the bowl, we learned that brine is an excellent conductor of electricity, and that it was possible to bring even a viscerated pike back to life for a minute or so. It still tasted awful. My Uncle John was a big influence too. He inherited an excellent old fly rod that he kept at my Gran's house in the Yorkshire Dales. However, his real skills lay in the more traditional countryman's art of poaching. He taught us to tickle trout, but I'm afraid that my heart was never in it. He was prosecuted for salmon poaching more than once. He was the son of a policeman and worth a whole book to himself. If I ever get hold of his criminal record I'll write his biography. In later years I took him fly-fishing from a boat on my local reservoir. He really couldn't cast by modern standards, but that was not what you needed in the old days; it was stealth.
That old green-heart fly rod (once belonging to Colonel Greenwell) was inherited from his Grandad Swain (my maternal great grandfather) who was the head gardener at a big house in County Durham
(Photo). He seems to have been quite an exceptional man and I've been told that his temperament and the gene for fly fishing came to me from him. My brother inherited the rod though. Actually fishing with my uncle or my dad was a rare event. They talked about it a lot and they encouraged me and my brother Alex a great deal, but I don't think that the post war generation of men spent much time with their kids really. They didn't have much leisure time as they had to support a family on one one income. I have one really fond memory though. When I was four we moved from Yorkshire to Hampshire where my father had found work. This was serious trout country where the streams came off the chalk and the trout where monstrous. We were not allowed to fish for them but my father found out that we could fish in the moat around Winchester Cathedral. We spent an idyllic Saturday learning about Captain Webb the mud-diver who went under the foundations to prop up the sinking edifice and then we burst into the sunshine to join quite a lot of other children who were already fishing. The tackle was simple. All you needed was a string with a bent pin for a hook and a worm. Your keep-net was a jam-jar on a string. My dad had done his research and we were prepared. Our quarry species was the stickleback and we caught a lot of them. I was so impressed with the red-robin tummies of the males that I just couldn't catch enough of them. The bent pin was just for holding the worm on the end of the line. The fish held on to the worm while you lifted them out and dropped them in the jar. We must have caused submarine mayhem because sticklebacks, like many birds, are very territorial. They build a nest which the male defends against all comers. Removing the male, even for a minute, gives competitors and interlopers the chance that they have been waiting for. Releasing your captives then sets off a second wave of anarchy. As a result of that visit, I have remained fascinated by the smaller fish we find in our rivers. I can happily look under stones for bullheads and loaches all day. Only last year, at the age of 60, I caught a brook lamprey for the first time. The other effect of that day was that, for the next ten years or so, I became a serious worm fisherman.
Alex Stevenson added the following remarks:
"I seem to remember using wool on that outing to the cathedral and it worked because their teeth got snagged in the yarn. Also Great Grandfathers rod was a Hardy split cane ladies rod circa 1910 but had been damaged and mended. If you would like it you can have it for your birthday. The old greenheart rod that used to hang in the house I think was one of John's aquisitions but don't know what happened to that." ~
"The big question is was Colonel Greenwell a brother to the famous Bishop Greenwell who invented the Greenwells Glory fly? He was Bishop of Durham you know and as one son inherited, one went into army and one joined the church in the old way of things it might well have been used by the great man himself for brook fishing. Who knows?"
I owe my interest in fish directly to my father, though he was more utilitarian than I would ever be about it. As kids we ate, or tried to eat perch, pike, roach and rudd; all dreadful. We would stop at bridges to look at the river beneath in the hope of seeing a fish only to have my Dad try and stun it with a handy rock. To get a pike to taste less like a pond and more like a fish we were told to marinade it in salt water over-night. When the power-lead from our electric kettle fell into the bowl, we learned that brine is an excellent conductor of electricity, and that it was possible to bring even a viscerated pike back to life for a minute or so. It still tasted awful. My Uncle John was a big influence too. He inherited an excellent old fly rod that he kept at my Gran's house in the Yorkshire Dales. However, his real skills lay in the more traditional countryman's art of poaching. He taught us to tickle trout, but I'm afraid that my heart was never in it. He was prosecuted for salmon poaching more than once. He was the son of a policeman and worth a whole book to himself. If I ever get hold of his criminal record I'll write his biography. In later years I took him fly-fishing from a boat on my local reservoir. He really couldn't cast by modern standards, but that was not what you needed in the old days; it was stealth. 
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