FISHING

I learned to fish from the hunchbacked gardener employed by my grandfather. He had not always been a hunchback - Grandpa had sepia photographs of himself and his catches over the years. Often in the background was this ram rod straight shining black man who was barely recognisable as old bent Willy. I was one of the third generation in our family he taught the art of fishing - and he went on to give yet another set of kids the basic skills before he died. No one ever knew how old he was - he seemed ageless - but he outlasted my grandpa by thirty years. Grandpa was 82 when he died.

Willy taught us how to bait a hook; where the fish might be - you be the fish he used to say, where would you stay; how to let them taste the bait and when to strike. He taught us patience and a good deal more but I suppose his lasting gift was to encourage us to look around at all the wonders of the world in the quiet times when the fish weren't biting. I am not saying that this made me a greenie or a bushy - I am a city dweller first and foremost and a great believer in creature comforts - but it did make me appreciate the inner tranquillity which comes with fishing.

For me, fishing became something more than catching fish. I thought for many years it was. World records as a concept never held much interest. The idea was to catch more, and bigger fish, than anyone in your party. -  - We rarely threw anything back. As one of our crewmen on Kariba (his name was Manzi, which appropriately enough means water) used to say "Fish is fish" and if you didn't eat them there was always someone who would.

I suppose it was on Kariba that I first had some doubts about this process. The triggers was the weekend when we really got amongst the fish. The dam waters had risen following the rainy season, drowning insects by the million and feeding a population explosion of fish. We caught hundreds. They weren't wasted because fish was a commodity in short supply in Zimbabwe at that time and we had freezers on the boat. But I was concerned about this slaughter and spoke to game rangers about the dangers of over fishing. They assured me that we could never do any real damage to the fish population with rod and line. But ....... i couldn't help but wonder if they were right.

It was also on Kariba that the overwhelming glory of the wild really came home to me. The sunrises and sunsets on the Lake are unbelievable and the stars at night can only be described in cliches. Add to this heady mix 200 kilometres of game reserve filled with elephants, buffalo and assorted wild animals and you have a unique experience in the correct meaning of that overworked word. I have always abhorred hunting, so how could I catch fish?, asked my son, Matt after I had shamefully tried to force him to fish when he hated it. Hated the piercing of the wriggling worm, the hook in the fishes' mouths, their flapping in the bottom of the boat as they gasped for oxygenated water.

I cannot say that there was a Pauline conversion in a flash of light, but I knocked back an offer to go for marlin, because to me they equated with some of the magnificent land animals - leopards, lions, cheetahs. I also decided, after a couple of trips to the islands in the Indian Ocean that any kind of deep sea fishing, where a lure is dragged around for hours before a luckless fish succumbs and then is winched aboard on unbreakable line was not for me.

And so I came to fly fishing and catch and release. This seemed to me to overcome all my doubts and to optimise enjoyment. A high level of skill is required to interest any of the skittish fish, which tend to live in habitats of unequalled splendour,. The line used is the lightest possible to give the fish all the advantages and every fish is carefully handled as it is brought in to the rod before being released to swim and fight another day. I gloried in the streams and mountains where the best trout live - it didn't matter if I caught or not, this was real fishing.

But a cloud, no bigger than a man's hand has appeared on my horizon. I cannot get out of my mind the images evoked by a New Zealand guide telling us of a campaign in Germany aimed at stopping even catch and release. It features a man casting a worm to a beautiful bird, hooking it and bringing it in. Although he releases it gently, it flaps away, exhausted and traumatised. Can I go on hooking fish after that?