Fishing Lines: Dangle the bait and hook them for life

Every couple of weeks, I take the local youngsters fishing. These expeditions require an endless supply of hooks, floats and line; the patience of a London bus driver; and a car with the build quality of a Centurion tank. My poor old Saab, once quite an elegant car, now has an endless hatch of bluebottles and smells worse than a Dyno-Rod bog brush.

Still, I don't begrudge the small cost in tackle or even the slightly larger cost in car deodorant. I suspect I was no tidier or less clumsy at that age. Furthermore, these days out are a healthy reminder of things that it's easy for adults to forget, such as just how big a 3lb fish is, the problems of controlling tackle in high winds and what a disaster the loss of your only float can be. When you've got a boxful of the things, a float stuck in a tree is no big deal. But when that is your only float, you have to pack up. Goodnight, Vienna.

I make regular checks to ensure my charges are not up to mischief (though this has never been a problem). I'm also required to unhook fish, sort out tangles and remove hooks from clothing and anatomy. Last week I came upon one of the newcomers with tears streaming down his cheeks. "What's the matter, Mark?" I asked. "I'm afraid I've lost the float you gave me, Mr Elliott," he said. (He had earlier lost the only one he had brought.) As an adult, stocking up with another half-dozen floats is merely a matter of popping into the local tackle shop. When you're 11 years old, one float is a week's pocket money.

Anyway, I reassured him that I had dozens of the things and that losing a float was far less significant than losing a big fish, which really was something to cry about. He was so pleased that he kicked his bait- box into the lake. We set up his tackle again, and I watched him try to fish with the inadequate 6ft rod that a well-meaning father had bought. The rod was far too short for him to cast properly, and it was highlighted by the fact that he was trying to heave his tackle to the far bank.

It brought back memories of my childhood, when I was convinced that the secret was to reach the far bank of the Thames, where monsters surely lurked. My task was made doubly hard because I slavishly followed the seminal book Mr Crabtree Goes Fishing, which insisted that the true angler learned to use a centre-pin reel before advancing to the new-fangled fixed- spools. What Crabtree never told you was that the latter was easy, the former impossible. But I copied the master's actions, taking huge coils of line between my fingers like playing cat's cradle with a giant, slowly back and... it all tangled round the rod top. The resulting knot took 15 minutes to unravel, and usually ended in me biting impatiently through the line.

It was years before I learnt that fish live where there is food and shelter, and not necessarily at the location farthest from an angler. In the new- fangled man-made lakes, this can often be right under your feet, inches from the bank.

For Mark, the realisation that he did not have to get every inch of line off the reel came as a wonderful surprise. He merely had to drop his (or my) float next to a small bed of lilies, throw in a few grains of sweetcorn, and within a few minutes, a fat carp was wallowing on the end.

He eventually caught four, lost many more and has been round twice since to see when we are going out again. To his credit, he even got an advance on his pocket money and tried to repay me for the lost tackle. I told him to put it towards a spool of lighter line.

I've just been given an old but serviceable rod by someone having an attic clear-out, and with a few new rings, it will be as good as new. Enthusiasm like Mark's needs rewarding, because it rewards me too. You see, I was that kid many years ago.