“I have just caught a dace. A solitary silver dace. Not a chub, but a dace.

They can get mixed up, I know. Sometimes a dace can be mistaken for a small chub. But I have the eyes of an expert where issues like this are concerned. I have never caught a large dace and you may argue that this dace, this seven ounce dace, was not a large dace. However, I want you to think again.

The British record dace as I was growing up weighed in at a mighty one pound, four ounces and four drams. It was caught in 1960 by a Mr Glasson. My seven ounce dace was over a third of that weight.

Let us consider the blue marlin. The world rod-caught record weighed in at one thousand eight hundred and five pounds. A blue marlin weighing a third of that would weigh over six hundred pounds. I have never fished for a marlin, nor am I likely to, but you have to say a 600 pound fish is a big fish – a very big fish indeed.

Incidentally, my seven ounce dace was caught within sight of a tackle shop. You can see it over the road in the accompanying picture.

I almost took the fish into the shop to show it off in the net, but then I realised it would be wrong on so many levels.

1)      I would be laughed at.

2)      A fish should never see the inside of a tackle shop.

3)      It might not have weighed as much as seven ounces when weighed on their scales.

4)      It might have been a chub.

So I placed the net gently back into the water, lowered it, and I watched my biggest dace to date swim off over the rim. I loved the way he immediately turned right into the water and darted off upstream away from the tackle shop. I watched him as he sped into the depths. In ratio terms, all 600 pounds of him.”