Fish food

At the weekend I found myself standing beside a river in Hampshire's idyllic Test valley, getting to grips with the basics of fly fishing.
I have to admit fly fishing is something I never thought I'd be doing, but the opportunity to do a beginners course came up and it suddenly seemed like a great idea. It was - contrary to what I'd been told - not at all boring. The sun shone for the first time in about eight months, and the tutors - who all work along the river on the fisheries - were incredibly patient.

As it turned out, no sooner had I amateurishly cast my line into the lake and was happily chatting to someone else that I felt the unmistakeable tug of a fish on the end.

Fishing, it turned out, is actually rather more brutal than I imagined. It takes care to get the fish out of the water without breaking the line, and then you have to kill it as quickly as possible by hitting it on the head with a miniature wooden hammer, or anything else that happens to be lying around. One of the pros then grabbed a stick and staked it into the side of the riverbank for me, to keep cool until the end of the day.

In spite of my clear lack of skill, it was a real thrill to actually catch a fish. We happily went home to put them on the barbecue with lemon, white wine and butter in a tin foil parcel. It tasted of the river, and was lovely and fresh and about three times the size of a trout you'd get in a supermarket - well worth the seven hours on the riverbank.