REFLECTIONS OF A FISHERMAN. By Geoffrey A. Smith. With eight drawings by Judy Whittlestone and text illustrations by the author.

1987 1st edition. 8vo (140 x 222mm). Pp205. B/w illustrations by Judy Whittlestone and the author, maps. Green boards, spine titled in silver-gilt.

Memories of coarse and flyfishing in Derbyshire". As a boy he fished the canals and ponds around Stanton-by-Dale, usually with bread as bait, and he can still recall the thrill of his first catch, a gudgeon weighing all of three ounces. In adulthood he learned to use a fly rod and would spend his weekends, with his friends Arnie, Syd and George, wooing the brown trout in the river Derwent, revelling in the closely fought contests between fish and man. Vividly he recreates an idyllic world of flowing water, lush meadows and reed-fringed banks; of water voles cavorting in quiet pools, the contented calls of moorhen and mallard and, above all, the magic of water ringed with trout rising to the fly in the dusk of a summer evening".