First cast your fly, then be patient... for 50 years!

CAST CATCH RELEASE by Marina Gibson (Hodder Press £16.99, 288pp)

Hear the term ‘fly-fishing’ and what comes to mind? For anyone over 40 it’s inevitably the dulcet tones of the fictional author Jr Hartley in the 1980s Yellow Pages ad. For others perhaps a laird with tremendous whiskers wading through a Scottish stream.

But these days, that’s grasping the wrong end of the rod. If you go fishing, you’re just as likely to be next to someone sporting tattoos as tweeds. Celebs such as rita Ora, Zac efron and David Beckham have all spoken about being hooked on fishing.

at the forefront of this passion for splashing are fish-fluencers such as Marina Gibson, who has built up 73,500 followers on Instagram. Her undeniable glamour — with astounding good looks she resembles a model rather than someone who spends hours in damp waders — means that she’s frequently been underestimated and subjected to sexism.

One company offered her a deal to promote their brand but just before the announcement the owner made clear he wanted photographs of her wearing as little as possible in the campaign. On a fishing tour the (male) organiser said they would be sharing a room, and when she refused he spent the whole time critiquing her.

However, her memoir Cast Catch release — a charming and cleverly written book which uses the metaphor of the salmon’s life cycle to explore her own personal journey — should put paid to such taunts. It’s meditative and revelatory for those of us who don’t know our pikes from our bonefish.

Gibson’s story begins up in Scotland where she’s taught to fish by her mother from an early age. By eight she is able to do the Spey cast, a graceful, circular sweep that sends the fishing line into a D-shaped loop, and then catches her first salmon at 11.

But just as the smolt — an adolescent salmon — has to leave its birth river to migrate, so too does Gibson, pictured, turn her back on fishing for a party lifestyle and a destructive relationship. The healing begins when she gets her 21st birthday present — a pair of fishing rods.

and so, her account of how fishing took over her life begins.

The book is crammed with lyrical descriptions of different expeditions she takes — from hunting the golden dorado in the Bolivian rainforest to hooking russian salmon in the Kola peninsula, fish so tough they live under the ice all winter.

Not that the UK’s waters are neglected; some of the most beautiful accounts are of fishing for trout in the river Test in Hampshire or for salmon in the Spey in northeast Scotland.

The book is divided into three parts with

each referring to a key part of fishing; cast (the elementary technique that fishers must master to propel the fly on to the water); catch, and release. Each also refers to a different aspect of Gibson’s life — from her first forays into angling, her marriage, and then her divorce and rebuilding of her life.

She got married in her mid-20s. It started with high hopes — moving to an idyllic part of Yorkshire, a wedding day which involves an honour guard of fishing rods and inevitably a fishing trip for their Mexican honeymoon.

But six months in, she found that her increasing workload and profile was pulling them apart; while he wanted to settle in one place, she still wanted adventure and travel.

Despite marriage counselling, they end up divorcing, the stress and pain devastating them both. And Gibson once again returns to fishing — in this case chasing the bumphead parrotfish in the Farquhar Atoll in the Indian Ocean. She makes clear the restorative element of a pursuit that allows an appreciation of nature and is the opposite of our preoccupation with busyness and productivity. She quotes the legendary American fly-fisher Joan Wulff who, when asked how long it takes to become a truly great caster, replied dryly: ‘It took me fifty years to get to this point’.

Gibson’s also evangelical about getting more women to wade in generally; after all, the record for the largest salmon ever caught with a rod in British waters is still held by Georgina Ballantine in October 1922 (it weighed in at 64lb and was almost 1.5m long).

This could be an ideal present for the keen angler in your life — or indeed perhaps for their patient partner, who might finally understand the lure of sitting for hours on banks waiting for the smallest of ripples under the water.