Botham on the Fly - Chris Tarrant

" Liam and I have fished this stretch for over 10 years. It's practically our home water. We try to fish here as often as possible. As it's Chris's 1st visit to the `til that time, Liam kindly, if not foolishly, offers to be his gilly."

" Thank you, my man. There's a shiny shilling in it for you."

" Very good. We're very lucky to have the rod every Wednesday here. The season starts in February and goes right through at the end of October, so it's a fair long stretch of fishing time, and we've had a very good year this year simply because they would tread the water right through the summer. Fairly good spring. The autumn, as you can see, is okay, but we're hoping for, you know, a few big fish towards the end."

" But today, I'm using a 15-foot salmon rod with an intermediate line. I'm using a tube fly with a copper head so just it moves a bit in the water. I found them very successful over the year, you know, especially in big waters, and just like anything, every fish knows his favorite fly and I'm a big shrimp man. My dad has a silver stoat's man. He likes silver stoats. Everybody has got the choice as people like black and yellow tubes and back ends or silver dots and all sort of thing for the spring season. It's just I really love that preference and but with me, it's the alley's shrimps also with a little bit of red and black end."

" Armed with a stoat's tail and alley's shrimp, we've fished our way through the upper beat and disappointingly don't even get a pull. Although Chris is a keen salmon angler, he is also a very accomplished all rounder and was introduced to angling at a very young age."

" I started fishing when I was 4. And my dear old granddad took me on the River Thames just outside Reading. And it was like, this is fantastic and I've just been literally [unk] cliché hooked for life. I really have ever since and I've just always fished. I've always, always, always, through like school days, student days, working days, busy days, you know, good periods of my life, bad periods, divorce, you know, whatever. There's always been fishing, and I can't imagine my life without it. I can't imagine. It just motivates an awful lot of my thinking, you know, my spare time. It's like about going fishing. When I was really ridiculously busy, when I was also doing radio shows in the morning and TV shows at night and all that. I would still always find time for fishing. One morning, I caught a 36-pound carp before I went to Capital Radio, and it was the best show I ever did `til about 24/7. I just sort of completely cracked. But I've just always done it. It's always been the central part of my life."