Fishing takes you away from everything; it’s transfixing, meditative, cerebral. The places it takes you to physically can be truly wild and unspoiled. I’ve been to the Bahamas, Seychelles, Bhutan and run-down, counter-intuitive places. I get a thrill catching a trout in a place where they ought to have given up the ghost long ago.
I was into fishing from an early age. My favourites are trout, salmon, bonefish, pike — they’re all charming in their own way. Fishermen make great conservation watchdogs, good barometers of the landscape, tuned into subtle things going on in the environment.
You have to be on your mettle with fishing, but you don’t really succeed at it until you calm down, accept what the weather’s going to give you. You can’t force it. I feel more alive when I’m fishing, a bit less self-possessed; you have to relax and let go.
The Accidental Angler by Charles Rangeley-Wilson.
