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GRAEME PEART, EMAIL

I was tidying my garage and came across a box containing some old copies of Improve Your Coarse Fishing from 1996 to 2006.

I didn't want to throw them away so I sorted out the covers and decided to cover a pine box with them. I should add at this point that my wife wasn't very happy as she used the aforementioned pine box for storage.

The top of the box just had to be John Wilson and on one side I wanted to use Gareth Purnell's 100lb on 79 maggots. Matt Hayes, Mick Brown, Chris Tarrant and Nuddy also had to be used somewhere.

I don't have a favourite front cover – they're all great – although I have to say Matt Hayes seemed to be on every other issue back then!

I read with interest the article about ' parachute maggots' ( IYCF 362) hooked through the middle of their bodies, especially the bit that said "prepare for a bombshell," suggesting this was a new innovative method.

About 50 years ago, as a mad keen youngster, I fished local small farm ponds for small crucians and the lily pond in the local cemetery ( after it closed or the grave diggers chased us away). At the time I was given a collection of angling books that had belonged to a recently deceased angler.

The books were old when I got them, but I read every word with great enthusiasm ( more enthusiastically than reading school books for sure!). I can't remember any book titles, but among the authors were legends such as Dick Walker, Bernard Venables and Peter Stone. I remember very clearly one passage describing the ' parachute maggot' tactic, although they didn't call it that.

I think it was in a Dick Walker book, but maybe not, but it described a problem the author and his friends had while fishing a stillwater. I think it was from a boat at dusk where, by shining a light into the water, they could see numerous roach feeding on their loose offerings of maggots but steadfastly refusing the baited hook.

The book described how they realised that the baited hook dropped ( fast) with the maggot vertical, but the loose offerings all fell horizontal. So they tried hooking maggots horizontally and, bingo, the roach were fooled. So, it just goes to show the old angling legends of days gone by were just as savvy as today's thinking anglers, if not more so, and there really isn't anything new in angling.

Does anyone else remember reading this same story?