The shelves in my office sag and groan under the weight of my fishing books. There are hundreds of them, and I am fond of them all – even the bad ones, of which there are many. It is a comfort just to scan the titles. Some incline to the poetic – Where the Bright Waters Meet, At the Tail of the Weir, A River Never Sleeps. Some are memorable for their simplicity – Rod and Line, Gone Fishing. Some are entirely self-explanatory – Big Pike, Roach Fishing, Fishing the Dry Fly. For brevity (no other reason) I have a soft spot for Fish by Lord Walsingham. Two of my favourites, both as titles and books, are B B’s Confessions of a Carp Fisher and My Fishing Days and Fishing Ways by J W Martin, who styled himself ‘Trent Otter’. 

I rather like Blood Knots, Luke Jennings’s title. It is both apt – the blood knot is used to connect two lengths of nylon, and its little brother, the half-blood knot, to tie on the hook – and suggestive. And I liked the book too, although it is