A summer of top-notch sport

While success with a rod or gun isn't always guaranteed, Laurence Catlow perseveres and finds plenty to enjoy

- Laurence Catlow

I think I have already told you that, if push came to shove, and if the shove was equivalent to something way up there on the Richter scale, demanding that I should renounce one of the two sports that I so love, I should almost certainly choose to remain a fisher rather than a shooter.

A winter without the opportunity of lifting my gun on to a bird or two would be a grim and cheerless prospect. If, perhaps, I was still allowed to work my spaniels and in this way play my part in shooting days, although it would still be a deprived and diminished life, I can just about persuade myself that I might find it tolerable. But the thought of a spring and summer without fishing, a spring and summer without long days on my rivers in pursuit of trout, is completely unbearable. A life without fishing seems, to me at least, a life that is no longer worth living.

And why, you may be wondering, am I telling you this all over again? Well, a couple of weeks ago a bright and breezy day found me sitting, at about 4pm, on the banks of the Wharfe. There had been heavy showers the preceding day and the river was something like a fly-fisher’s dream; it was the middle of May, it was also warm and there were hawthorn flies on the wing.