I was probably around 11 or 12 the first time I went fishing and, If I recall correctly, it was at my dad's suggestion. His uncle, at that time well into his retirement, had in his younger days been an avid fisherman and so one day my dad suggested that he might teach me. Unfortunately he was too old to ever really take me fishing but he did help me buy my first rod, well okay, he helped my dad buy me my first rod, and offered me loads of advice.

For weeks prior to my first fishing trip I read and read and read about rigs, techniques, baits, species and would often set up my new rod (without the reel attached), and just practice handling the rod, casting, 'mending the line' and striking. The night before my first trip I watched a fishing program on TV, I've no idea what it was called or who presented it other than it just appeared to be some old guy in his garden shed introducing clips of other people catching fish and talking a lot about the 'theory' of fishing. I can't remember much about this program other than one thing, during one of his pieces to camera he talked about people just learning to fish and said "if you catch a fish on your first trip you will be a fisherman for life". On hearing this I was both desperate and determined to catch at least one fish on my first trip.

The day of my first fishing trip arrived and off we all went as a family, including my dad's uncle, up to the River Thames at Richmond. Picking a swim to fish wasn't so much a case of 'reading the water' as just finding a nice spot to sit and so we ended up fishing off a wooden jetty. As I remember setting up was a lot trickier than I remembered but eventually with a lot of help from my dad's uncle I had a stick float attached to my line and a size 18 hook with 2 maggots on it.

I can't in all honesty remember too much about that day other than the fact that I kept casting and casting and throwing, far too large, handfuls of maggots around my float but just couldn't seem to get a bite. My sister though who, although older than me and who also hadn't gone fishing before, was having better luck and had managed to catch a Perch and either a Dace or a Roach.

All day I continued to try and catch that elusive first fish but as everyone else had packed up and was sitting in the car and were now calling for me to give up so we could all go home I turned to them and said "Just one last cast". With that I put on two fresh maggots and cast out as far as I possibly could. As the float settled in the water I saw it bob. Then it bobbed again and then finally went under. In what was possibly the most violent strike ever recorded along the entire length of the Thames I whipped the entire rod up into the air and then a split second later felt that "tap tap" of a fish on the other end of the line!.

After much excitement my first ever fish was on the bank next to me, a Dace. By no means the largest fish in the world, not even large by Dace standards but a fish none the less. I was a fisherman for life.

For the next 10-12 years I religiously went fishing every weekend and quickly both my experience, skills and the amount of tackle that I would take with me grew. By my late teens I was a regular at my local lakes where I was often the one to catch when nobody else could, I had won my first fishing match and come 3rd in my second and quite frankly had more gear than I could carry. As I got older I started to get a little disenchanted with fishing as Carp fishing had become the standard and it just seemed that all anybody wanted to do was to cast out a boilie on a bolt rig and put the rod on a bite alarm and then sit and wait. Too often I would see these Carp 'Anglers' show enormous dissatisfaction in 'only' catching a 7lb Carp or would look on in disdain if the person next to them had 'only' caught a nice Bream or Roach as if the only species worth catching was Carp.

I was also becoming more and more frustrated with the types of waters that I had access to living in London. The kind of waters I wanted to fish where more rural in location, had better quality fish in them not necessarily in terms of size but in terms of the health of the fish. Too often I was seeing fish with fin damage, scales missing, lips ripped, blind in one eye, covered in parasites etc etc. What was happening to the sport I loved? Not having the transport to get out of London for a days fishing and limited to waters that I could get to on public transport I just ended up not going any more. I never made the conscious decision to stop and indeed I would never have said that I had stopped, I just wasn't going.

This not going lasted for 10 years! During this time I moved house many times, met and married my wife, changed jobs twice and yet even though there were times that I could seriously have done with the money, I could never face the idea of selling my gear as that would have really meant that I had given up fishing. Instead I carefully put all my gear in the loft and moved it from house to house. My wife kept saying to me that "if you don't want to sell it then why don't you start going again" but there just never seemed to be enough time or enthusiasm to make this a reality.

Then I somehow got the idea into my head that maybe I could take up Sea Fishing. I now live close to the sea, you didn't need a rod license, you could fish all your round and eat your catch. The main problem was that I didn't have any sea fishing gear and didn't want to fork out for some if it turned out that I didn't like it so I just thought I'd try using my Carp rods and Baitrunner reels. The only trouble with this was that the more I looked into this the more I realised that I didn't actually like many sea fish but what it did do was make me want to go coarse fishing again. Once again for weeks all I could think about was going fishing again so I got all my gear down from the loft and found that almost all of it was intact. The only things I needed to replace was the line, hooks and a Carp sling that the moths had well and truly eaten.

The question now was, where to go fishing? The last time I went fishing was when I was living in London, now I live in West Sussex and had no idea about what waters were in my area. Fortunately in the 10 years since I had last gone fishing a lot of changes to the sport had been made and now just about any water worth talking about has it own website, so a quick search on the Internet found me the Pulborough Angling Society, www.pulboroughas.com. Pulborough Angling Society have some truly excellent waters and are very well regarded so it was a simple decision to join.

I guess that old guy on that TV program 20+ years ago was right, if you catch a fish on your first trip, you will be a fisherman for life!