Once upon a time, back in the early fifties, when my parents hadn't even met, so I wasn't even a glimmer in me dad's eye, this bunch of blokes met up. Way back then, big carp didn't get caught much. In fact, it was widely believed that they couldn't be caught at all. So these blokes got together, and decided to go for the big ones, an aim in which they succeeded, and in some totally weird kind of unconnected way, the folk we see sitting in bivvies for eight weeks at a time, surrounding by thirty thousand quid’s worth of electronic gear, and the odd rod or three, can trace their technique all the way back to them - the Carp Catchers' Club.

The membership of the CCC was limited to twelve, some of them very well known, Richard Walker, "BB," Maurice Ingham, and Bernard Venables, to name but four. They never really met up, all of them, but they passed a letter between them, discussing how big fish might be caught, and it turned out to be worth it, because the CCC caught some socking great carp and not a few eels. Bernard kept sending his apologies, because he was trying to get a new magazine called the Angling Times on its feet.

Normally, these things get thrown away, but by some miracle, the Carp Catcher's Club letters were preserved, and here they are, edited by Maurice Ingham, five hundred pages of modern angling classic.