"Two friends came round to dinner recently. One is a musician and one is a record producer. As they walked into the house, they noticed the laptop was open and displaying a photograph of me holding a fine fish. In fact, it was the photograph that accompanies this blog.

Knowing these two as I do, I realised that their interest in fish and fishing is about the same as my interest in the twelve-tone works of Schoenberg or which side of a table tennis bat (pimple or smooth) will impart the best top spin.

I try to keep my fishing life away from these friends as much as possible, for it is just not part of their life.

‘Wow that’s quite a big fish,’ one of them said, in what might have been a mildly mocking tone.

‘What sort of fish is it?’ asked the other, joining the teasing.

These are definitely not fishermen.

However, I saw an opportunity for fun, too. I removed all the cash from my pocket and put it on the table in front of the computer screen.

‘Right,’ I said ‘You both get one guess as to what species of fish I am holding in that photograph and if either of you gets it right you can have all this money.’

I gestured at the cash on the table with a sweeping arm movement, like one of the models who used to show off the prizes on Sale Of The Century.

‘What all sixty three pence of it?’ asked one, counting.

‘Yes,’ I replied, thankful that I hadn’t had a pile of notes in my pocket, but still feeling safe that I was going to keep the money and return it to my pocket shortly.

Let me tell you why I surmised that my money was safe.

My record producer friend has spent the best part of the last thirty years staring at mixing desks across all four corners of the globe. His life is full of knobs. And noise, repeated noise.

He will listen to an individual song or track in part or in full up to ten thousand times before finally calling it mixed. And although I have been guilty of the same kind of activity, I try to balance it by getting outside and fishing as often as I can for fear of madness.

He, on the other hand, just gets on with the next song.

‘Bream,’ said he.

‘No,’ said I. But I have to admit to feeling quite impressed as I had no idea that he would even know of such a fish’s existence.

‘Salmon,’ said the other.

I pocketed the money. Game over.

But they kept guessing.

The guesses then went
3) Bass
4) Roach
5) Larch

I laughed out loud when one of them said ‘larch’, especially as he had his serious, putting-a-lot-of-mental-effort-into-it face on.

Do not get me wrong, these are intelligent men. It is just that fish or fishing has never been on their radar. But larch? I ask you.

It is, of course, as I told them, a pine."