The 8oz king

Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime. Teach your child to fish, and you forge a bond that will last forever.

In 1977, the United Kingdom turned red white and blue as the nation prepared to mark the 25th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II’s ascension to the throne. Nationally, there were planned parades. Locally, bunting lined the roads ahead of thousands of street parties. Meanwhile, the Sex Pistols strategically released their song “God Save the Queen” to cause maximum outrage and controversy.

My father and four of his friends were planning to mark the occasion in quite a different way.

My father was a keen fisherman and an accomplished and relatively successful match angler. To the uninitiated, match fishing involves dozens and sometimes hundreds of competitors fishing for a period of five hours to see who can catch the most fish. Although there are exceptions, the winner is generally decided based upon the weight of their catch. When the weigh-in has taken place and the winner decided, the fish are returned unharmed to the lake, river or canal from whence they came. Prizes range from fishing rods and tackle to cash prizes that, in the 1970s, could run to a few hundred pounds.