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It was my grandfather who started the tradition of fishing in our family; in the 1930s - prior to The Second World War, he and my father used to go fishing on the River Thames at Hampton Court and were told about The Longwater in Bushy Park nearby. My father and grandfather began fishing there and quickly found the Tench fishing to their liking and even after the War my father continued to go there, catching the 'Paper Train' out of Waterloo Station bound for Hampton Court or Hampton Wick.

The Longwater, Hampton Court, Bushy Park, London

As a baby I was taken to The Longwater in a pram and it was natural for me to want to take up fishing and catch the lake's Tench - just like my dad.

I can remember the Sunday morning ritual we enacted every time we went...........Whilst my father lit the methylated spirit stove for breakfast I was sent off into the undergrowth to find 'rod-rests'. The only items we carried were our rods and a landing net (bound together with leather straps) - we certainly didn't have such things as 'Holdalls' and rod-rests were just further weight to carry. I became very proficient at choosing just the right sort of forked branch (dead wood of course, fallen from the trees) and would sharpen one end with a knife so that it could be pushed into the ground. No rod-pods in those days!

Grandad fishing The Longwater, C1935

We used size ten 'Model Perfect' hooks to gut - actually I think they were Nylon   - but the old cat-gut casts had to be soaked in the margins of the lake before you used them because they were very brittle when dry and would snap if a fish was hooked. A few split-shots of any convenient size were bitten onto the line and a black Porcupine Quill float with a red tip was fixed by the eye onto the line well over-depth. This float had been my grandfather's favourite and he had used it for years; it led a charmed life, returning to the tackle-box despite numerous break-offs in the dense lilies. It was our 'lucky' float and I would always plead with my father to use it. Whenever I touched it I felt it possessed an old, valuable, secret, and propitious quality; regardless of whether conditions suited its use or not - Grandfather swore by it and that was good enough for me.

My father and me C1958, The Longwater, Hamton Court

One morning we were fishing a spot about half way along the Longwater where the branches of a great Elm tree hung right out over the water, it was our favourite spot and many were the great catches of Tench my father had made during the previous thirty years or so. I was very young - about eight years old and had so far never caught a Tench, I used to pester my father endlessly to let me catch one on his rod and on the day in question he gave in and relented.....

"Now take the rod and do exactly as I've taut you...................Tighten the line - that's it, and don't strike until the float disappears right away........Not until it goes right away"

In less time than it takes to tell, the float had plunged beneath the water, the line had tightened savagely, and the rod had slammed down to the horizontal with me hanging on for dear life with both hands!......Instantly, my father placed both his hands on my shoulders for he was convinced I would have been pulled into the water!

We never did find out what the fish was for it made good its escape in dramatic fashion.

It was a Carp of course.

I was left standing on the bankside, my little eight-year-old knees knocking together like nine-pins.

Are anglers - and I'm thinking here particularly of carp anglers, born to it, or are they - made by incidents such as these?