My Passion With David Wood

David Wood, private client partner at Langleys Solicitors LLP, based in York, on his passion for fly fishing.

My passion is fly fishing. I love the tradition surrounding salmon fishing in Scotland.

It’s like anything in life, if you are doing something you love with people you enjoy being with, with the added bonus of dramatic scenery and fine food and drink, there is something special about it.

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People talk about a Zen-like quality to fishing. You’re wading into fast moving rivers so you need to watch what you do with every step, or you could end up with a very cold swim and possibly a dangerous one. But when you’re doing that and concentrating on the fishing and wildlife such as ospreys, kingfishers, dippers, deer and otters, you do forget about work.

I learnt to fish when I was six. My grandfather fished for trout in his retirement. For what seemed like several lifetimes he said I was too young to go. I always say that I was born wanting to fish. It’s nearly true. It came from pre-school I think. It sounds bizarre as I’m not particularly religious, but hearing the stories of the fishermen on the Sea of Galilee – I suppose those colourful stories in the Bible are some of the first stories we hear at a young age at school; they captured my imagination for fishing.

I also love the literary tradition. Books such as Days and Nights of Salmon Fishing by William Scrope and Autumns on the Spey by AE Knox from the 18th century have been followed by some wonderful literature by international authors in the last century.

Mr Justice Kingsmill Moore was a Judge of the Irish Supreme Court who wrote A Man May Fish in the 1960s and Canadian authors and neighbours Roderick Haig Brown, a ground-breaking conservationist in the 50s and 60s, and Van Egan added to this inspiring body of work with books such as The Western Angler and A River Never Sleeps (Haig Brown) and Shadows of the Western Angler (Egan).

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Before our daughter arrived, my wife used to fish with me. I took her fishing on our third date. She caught three salmon and decided that catching salmon was easy. Since then she has realised that it is usually far more difficult. That is why it is called fishing and not catching!

I hope to teach my daughter to fish. Some of the best salmon fishers are women. A Miss Ballantyne caught the British record weighing 64lb in 1922, and her cousin, Miss Morrison, caught one weighing 61lb, which is the British fly caught record. The English record is held by another lady fisher, Miss Doreen Davy, who caught a 59lb salmon from the River Wye in Herefordshire.

If, once or twice I may have spent an hour or two longer on the river than was perhaps agreed upon at home, I am reminded of the ancient Babylonian proverb “The Gods do not deduct from Man’s allotted span the hours spent in fishing”.

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