Gone Fishin' - 2

During my years in Mombasa, both when I lived there permanently and, later, when I only returned for the summer holidays, I did some fishing but I don't recall it as being a frequent occupation. However, I remember going to Kilindini, Mombasa's big port, with a friend and fishing off one of the wharfs, using a hand line and small, frozen prawns as bait. The only fish I recall catching was an angel fish and, in my desperate efforts to  extract the hook, which it had swallowed, I killed it, after which we watched its beautiful colours fade.

I had the most wonderful opportunity to do some serious fishing while I was at Bradfield. The river Pang flowed through the college grounds and the fishing club had access to its superb brown trout, yet I didn't join it, my only encounters with the river being on the annual steeplechase when the last stretch included having to climb up one of the weirs - I'm at centre in the picture.

In my late teens I did some fishing of a different sort - commercial fishing in this boat, the RX134. My parents lived in the Old Town where my father was a member of the Hastings Fishermen's Club, and it was through his friends that I went out trammel netting. It was a dismal business as, when we hauled the nets, they contained far more plastic than fish - even in those days. However, I remember thoroughly enjoying the experience as well as the fish which I took home as pay.

I only started fishing seriously when, during our years in Rhodesia between 1967 and 1970, we spent as much time as possible in the Inyanga National Park wet fly fishing for trout. Cecil Rhodes had had a stately home built there and had stocked the rivers with American rainbows, which had proliferated to the extent that it was a condition of one's license that none could be returned to the water, however large or small. So we would fry the small trout lightly in butter and eat them like whitebait

I was introduced to the sport by David Witt, above, and he and I didn't confine our activities to Inyanga. So, at some risk of contracting bilharzia, we caught fresh-water bass in the reservoir on Bernard Mizeki College's land and catfish in a small, muddy river near his school at Wedza.

After we returned to England I tried to keep up my trout fishing but deep Gloucestershire lakes with somnolent farmed brown trout didn't compare to the rushing waters of the Pungwe or Matenderere, so my fishing activities, once again, lapsed.