ARTHUR’S ARCHIVES Dick Walker, 1954
The great Dick Walker caught a 2lb roach and a 1lb dace in the same session and left a lasting legacy to angling
“Dick Walker’s importance to our sport is so much more than simply big fish”
LOOKING through the massive photo archive at Angling Times, I’m surprised at how clearly I recall the stories behind the pictures – but it’s the quotes from the legends that stick in my mind the most. I remember, for example, Richard (Dick) Walker’s insistence that the River Kennet was possibly the finest barbel river in the country for numbers of fish but, because of the sheer volume of barbel, in his opinion, it would never produce a 10-pounder.
The record at the time was 14lb 6oz. How things have changed – the barbel record now stands at well over 20lb, and the biggest Kennet fish isn’t far behind at 19lb-odd.
While today most people associate the word double with any fish over 10lb, to Walker the Magic Double had an entirely different meaning. He used it to describe the insanely difficult feat of catching a 2lb roach and a 1lb dace in the same session.
Back in 1953 the great man not only managed to land such a wonderful brace but he repeated it – on demand! The venue was the River Beane in Hertfordshire, a Lea tributary now reduced to a trickle by abstraction. The story goes that Dick reported the event but didn’t have a picture to back it up, so he returned to the bank and repeated the task with a photographer present.
What I wouldn’t give for such a pair of fish in the same year, never mind the same day.
Dick Walker’s importance to our sport is so much more than simply big fish – the Arlesey bomb revolutionised legering, while compound taper blank design and test curves, to indicate a rod’s power, all began in this angling genius’s mind thanks to his engineering background. What a legacy.