Angling Vagabond

About the Book

Viewed through rose-tinted glasses after sixty years, any boyhood might be described as glorious, but growing up in the immediate post-war era, with its new-found sense of freedom, offered perhaps a more glorious prospect than most.

This story opens in Sussex in 1940 with descriptions of the author's first fishing expeditions, and other boyhood adventures, in the face of strong parental disapproval. Activities range from catching newts by hand and making fishing tackle from scratch, to scrumping fruit and testing the anti-tank potential of tar barrels.

A visit to Norfolk becomes a two-year stay with other relatives, who actively encourage fishing, and set up a lifelong angling habit. Against a background of an engine-driving grandfather and a farming uncle, is a description of a boy's country life around the end of World War Two. Fishing in both salt and freshwater alternates with gathering chestnuts, shooting, milking cows, and assisting grandfather at the engine shed.

Returning to Sussex, on a grammar school scholarship, fishing and other escapades are pursued in spite of the pressures of homework and long journeys to and from school. The author and friends develop from schoolboy fishers into serious anglers using state-of-the art tackle and methods. A growing compulsion to fish new waters in faraway places emerges as the author leaves school and achieves independence and his own transport.

About the Author

Ever since, as a seven-year-old, he espied some small brown fish in a brook, and then caught them, Dave Park has been a compulsive angler. Early parental opposition to his fishing simply made him even more determined to fish, as well as fostering his naturally rebellious tendencies.

Despite being at loggerheads with parents, schoolmasters, and authority in general, Dave finished up as an academic with two degrees and a university lecturing post in oceanography. He has fished all over the world, in six continents and all seven oceans, with several hundred different species of fish to show for it.

Angling was not his only interest either. One grandfather was a steam locomotive driver, the other a professional sea fisherman, and as Dave says, "salt and steam in the blood form a dangerous combination". Thus he became an oceanographer by profession, and drove steam locomotives as a pastime.

This is the story of Dave's escapades as a schoolboy and school-leaver during and just after World War Two. Eyebrows might be raised at his truancy, but always the truancy was in order to fish or to pursue one of his other interests - never for aimless mischief. Dave was to continue fishing throughout his working life, and is now retired, fishes as often as possible and spends a good part of the year fishing in faraway places around the globe.