A FOOL AND HIS EEL. By Mark Walsingham.

2012 1st edition. 4to (200 x 267mm). Pp415. Colour paintings and illustrations, colour and b/w photographs throughout, photograph end-papers. Green boards, spine titled in silver-gilt.

Mark Walsingham is a dedicated fisherman and long-time angling companion of Chris Yates, who has contributed the foreword to this book. "He is just as much at home trying to outwit an Avon barbel, or large river pike, as he is in search of the carp of a lifetime, and he's pretty successful at all of those. ...He is probably best known for his 'Ashmead Diaries' series in Carpworld, but this is far from just an extension of that. With his extensive work as a marine biologist, and his subsequent position as senior conservation manager with the National Trust, he has a wealth of stories to tell, and his love of flyfishing and old cane rods means that it's not just carp that sink his float, there are roach, perch, barbel, tench, salmon, trout; the list is endless. From wild carp in secluded southern pools to wild trout in remote Scottish lochs. From cold, lonely nights spent flyfishing for elusive sea-trout, to balmy summer days trying to entice mysterious monstrous carp into taking a carefully placed floater." Chapters include: The source; Pitt Pond; Meanders [Somerset, Australia and elsewhere]; The Golden Scale Club; The Avon barbel; Along the Ashmead Drove; Footloose with a flyrod; Silver ghosts; The Severn Oaks Syndicate; A fool and his eel; Crumbleholmes demise; The Grizzled-Wing Adams; Restoration [of Ashmead]; Encounters with pike; Salmo salar; The art of stalking carp; The Leney legacy; The disposable Avocet; Redmire; The quest for Fugglestone Red; Pitt Pond epitaph; Ashmead dreams; Ebb tide. A super book.