Watching anglers making the most of the last day of the coarse fishing season along the Thames at Kingston brought back happy memories of my childhood fishing days.
I spent many hours along the Thames and in local common ponds. My 'bible' was the classic beautifully illustrated 'Mr Crabtree goes fishing' by Bernard Venables and I learned much from its detailed descriptions of various fishing methods. So good was the book that it remains in print today, seventy years after publication. Naturally, rod and tackle design has moved on since those days but the basic principles of fishing still hold good.
In the close season I waited impatiently for the new season to begin in June using the vacant time to refurbish my tackle.
However, by way of compensation, the trout fishing season begins in April so coarse fishing devotees can seek out the wily trout (pictured) To my mind, the brown trout is one of nature's masterpieces, the epitome of poetry, power and grace. The river Wandle now has an established stock but my trout fishing was mainly confined to lakes among the Welsh mountains on summer holidays.
The art of fly fishing was a little tricky to master but occasionally we resorted to casting out a juicy brandling worm to improve our success rates. Any fish caught were more than replaced by netting yearling trout fry in a rapid mountain stream connecting two favourite lakes. The two inch long fish we then transported upstream to the larger lake and released to mature into beautiful adults for future years.
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