JOHN WILSON MADE SO MANY OF US GO FISHING
Truly inspirational in print, on television and in person... J
OHN Wilson portrayed everything that was good about fishing.
His TV programmes, made in the most professional way, showed angling to be simple, enjoyable, exciting and available – everything that’s necessarily for our sport to survive.
What came across most was how much he enjoyed his fishing: the infectious giggle, chuckle or downright roar of laughter wasn’t an act, it was as if the camera wasn’t there. The famous actors’ ‘fourth wall’ was broken and you were right there behind him.
John was a guest on my own show, Tight Lines, several times and I was lucky enough to be invited to film with him at his own lake in Norfolk.
John was so proud of that fishery and I caught some tench from exactly where he told me to fish, and how to fish it (the classic lift method, of course), then we set about catching carp on a fly rod, something I’d never done before.
Before Tight Lines I worked on a cable channel show called Fisherman’s Tales with DJ Nicky Horne and when we had John as a guest, Nicky surprised him.
John had once worked as a hairdresser in a shop belonging to Nicky’s father, and one of Wilson’s jobs was to look after the precocious young man.
Back in the 1980s, when I was managing a tackle shop, the best selling rod – by a long way – was the Masterline John Wilson Avon, a rod that would catch anything a freshwater angler was likely to encounter back in the day and, of course, that’s what John did... he caught anything and everything.
I couldn’t help but think about John when I heard the recent Chas and Dave song, “I Wonder Where He Is Now?” It’s about the late Chas Hodges’ early exploits fishing on the Lea Navigation in northeast London. ‘He’ caught more and bigger fish and as they were contemporaries... who knows? If so, Chas would certainly not have been the only budding angler to be inspired by this remarkable man.
Everyone who knew John will miss him badly, and our sport will miss him even more.