HOW WE GOT TO WHERE WE ARE
Much has changed since the 1960s when Leslie Moncrieff sparked a revolution in beach fishing. I still have my faded copy of Creel magazine featuring his spectacular catches of Dungeness cod along with the blow-by-blow account of the Layback casting style. To me he was a god wielding the iconic Springheel rod and Penn multiplier reel. Still on schoolboy pocket money, I struggled with the bottom two sections of a river rod and my grandad’s wooden centrepin reel. And yet, I could dream.
After a bizarre series of lucky breaks, I won the 1969 British Casting Association’s 6oz amateur multiplier championships with a record 191yd cast. Terry Carroll won the professional event with 197yd. We made a huge national media splash and featured on BBC TV and radio. The Times sent a reporter to interview me. I started to write about casting and fishing, becoming a regular in
