Editorial 65 - Sooner or later . . .

Sooner or later, all anglers get the urge to catch big fish - for much the same reasons that deer stalkers eventually get to hanker after a stag with a really good head. The challenge is one that hunters have faced for millennia; the chance to test oneself against a creature which has beaten the odds and through luck, strength and cunning, fought its way to the top of its tree.The origins of this test lie long in the past; in a time when contests like this were part of tribal initiation rights and when it was expected (in those politically incorrect days) that you should prove yourself to be a man, or perish in the attempt.The stakes were higher then, given that supermarkets hadn’t been invented, so the tests were correspondingly tougher and usually included the kind of stuff that we frown on now, like killing someone from the neighbouring tribe or hacking down a woolly mammoth and cutting it to bits in public.

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