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Back in the mid 1960s, a long time ago for many now but only just yesterday for me, as a kid still young enough to be expected to wear shorts for most of the time at school and at home and pair of jeans with wellies only when I went fishing and "exploring", my Mum and Dad gave me a copy of little, soft cover, Angling Times book by Fred J. Taylor - Tench Fishing or Fishing for Tench. I haven't seen the book in years but still have it in a box somewhere.

This book changed my fishing and that of my best mate and fishing buddy, Chris, a Middlesex farmer's son: we became tenchfishers overnight. Off we went, scouting a couple of nearby gravel pits that are now buried beneath the M4 - M25 junction near West Drayton / Heathrow. We peered through reeds. We eventually saw needle-like bubbles coming to the surface at the edge of some weedbeds. We raked swims. We groundbaited with oven-baked and minced-up stale loaves.We made peacock quill floats for fishing FredJ's "Lift Method", with breadflake and with worms from the muck heap in Chris's Dad's farmyard. We spent the summers of 1965 and 1966 on one small pit, and caught tench - quite a few of them, miraculously - 2- to 3-pounders with a couple of monsters of just over 4 pounds.

Fred J. Taylor, for Chris and I then, was God. He still is for me (Fred wasn't just about tench - he was also chub and barbel and the Thames and its tribs near Oxford). I am going to do something in mid June that I haven't done for many years: take a float rod and a few peacock-quill-section floats and a bit of bread over to a pit somewhere and think of old Fred as I wait for the float to lay flat then slowly slide away.