Promising to bring home a feed of fish is the absolute kiss of death to any chances of catching anything but a large heap of derision when you get home.

Feed a fish a cat a day

Fishing, by its very nature, nourishes the imagination, feeding it with a potent fuel of hope and desire.

How can you need so many rods and reels to catch a fish? , she asked, her lips pulled into that weaned on a gherkin look, as she watched me prepare for a fishing trip. Probably for much the same reason that you seem to need 30 pairs of shoes for one pair of feet, I nearly said, but decided to live for another day.

Reading the features you would get the impression that this year's crop of rods will allow you to cast from here to eternity, with a rod so light you need to tie it to your wrist to stop it blowing away.

If little fish get eaten by bigger fish, and bigger fish get eaten by bigger fish... what happens when there are no little fish? The world's populations of little fish are being harvested to make catfood!? This nonsense has to stop. Feed a fish a cat a day!

Every last cast is actually a first cast. The first cast and first chance to catch the next fish. The next time you anguish about whether to make that last cast, forget it - the anguish that is - and cast away. The next fish caught on a last cast will not be the first.