The Alternative Angler – Dick Walker

Never mind smelling the flowers, don’t forget to take time out to see the satirical side of fishing life and grab a laugh along the way as well. So here’s a regular column from Kevin Perkins to remind us that life is for laughing at, or taking the p*** out of, whenever we can.

Dick Walker – Angling Genius, or Genius who went Angling?

As a budding junior angler, I always avidly read everything I could get my hands on in order to improve my fishing skills. Whilst doing my paper round, I would always get the Angling Times out of the bag and read through it before it was delivered (saved paying for it!) and it was always Dick’s column that I made sure I read, before it disappeared into the letterbox. Despite holding the great man’s pronouncements in high esteem, whether in AT or his books, I never did manage to ‘connect’ with him at all through his writings.

Personally I always felt I was being preached to, rather than being informed and involved, the ‘beginners’ and ‘intermediates’ (like me) didn’t seem to be catered for, and it always appeared that the great man assumed you had already reached an acceptable level of competence, and that you were educated to A level standard, or above. Looking back over the years, there were a couple of things about RW that immediately came to mind.

I always wondered about his decision to remove ‘Clarissa’ from Redmire Pool, some may say it was a selfless act, what a wonderful opportunity to be able to give so many people a unique chance to closely study a large carp in captivity. On the other hand, the more cynical may just feel it was bordering on the selfish, in that whisking the fish out of Redmire was a sure-fire way of ensuring you will be able to bask in the glory of holding the carp record for some considerable time to come. Who better to pontificate about catching specimen fish than the man who had landed the biggest fish for years?

Then again, here was a consummate rod builder, someone who was skilled enough to split individual cane sections for built cane rods, and yet who seemingly failed to see the potential of fibreglass as a rod material, at one point deriding it as something worthy only of cutting down nettles. Conversely, a little while later, he certainly didn’t recommend that you use the Hardy glass rods bearing his own illustrious endorsement for a spot of bankside weed whacking……..

Looking back at the 50’s, 60s and 70’s, I think Dick Walker was the right man in the right place at he right time. In those far off, pre-internet days, Dick acted as a conduit for ideas and suggestions, his prodigious correspondence with fellow anglers meant he was probably in receipt of vast amounts of information which he could collate and sift, and then perhaps devise developments or improvements to tackle, or be inspired to go off and do what we today call ‘blue sky’ or ‘lateral’ thinking, much to the amazement of his contemporaries.

When it came to fishing, with such venues at his disposal as Redmire for carp, Arlesey for perch, tenching with the Taylors, piking up on Loch Lomond with Fred Buller or popping down to Avington for a crack at the giant rainbows, it would appear that for most of his fishing he was lucky enough to be presented with chances to visit the some really top class venues, and fish with some of the most proficient anglers of the day.

In my opinion, Dick Walker was a catalyst, a man who sat at the apex of two pyramids, one of information, the other opportunity, and was a very clever man who applied his intelligence to angling, usually with the seemingly single-minded purpose of capturing specimen-sized fish. It always appeared to me that Dick was travelling through life on a different plane to us mere mortals, and those ‘ordinary ‘ anglers who could not, or would not subscribe to his views, were left in his wake, so to speak.

Those who knew Dick Walker nearly always refer to him in glowing, almost reverential terms. The rest of us, and that is the vast majority, aren’t always canvassed for our thoughts. That silent majority of opinions would be based purely on what we have read, and if conjecture is omitted it is almost certainly going to be more subjective than those whose recollections offer reminiscences and anecdotes which are bound to be tinged with the slightly rosy glow of nostalgia and yearnings for those far-off utopian days.

In my humble opinion, Dick Walker was undoubtedly a brilliant man who just happened to go fishing. Had his chosen sport been golf, or archery, I don’t doubt he would have had a similar impact on both those pastimes. If ever there was someone who qualified for the phrase about ‘Being able to see further by standing on the shoulders of giants’ it was Dick Walker.