I have a question. On the issue of a lost fish, I cannot quite remember which wag of an angler first wrote “you cannot lose what you have never had”.

I seem to think Richard Walker repeated this bit of nonsense, but I don’t think he was the quote’s idiotic originator. It might just be that a literary type out there might put me out of my misery. Walton? HT Sheringham? Help, please...

But my misery is nothing compared to that which a great mate endured on the Hampshire Avon a few days back. It was a perfect swim on that perfect river, so perfect it could have been a Bernard Venables watercolour from half a century back (is BV the author I’m looking for perhaps?).

The forecast rain was sweeping in close, but the day was still dry and the wind was keen through the poplars and pollarded willows. The scene was a mix of browns, yellows and rusted golds and the crease he was fishing skirted an enormous slack, ever more fish friendly as the river rose steadily. Great Mate was trotting with maggots. He had fed off the minnows and dace of up to 12oz ounces were giving fine sport. And then the float dipped, the rod stayed bent, the reel spluttered and gave line. This was Great Mate’s moment, the strike we had been planning for.

Two rod lengths out, in the milky brown water, a vast, bronze-flanked fish rolled on the surface. This was a fabled Avon roach, one so huge that the world really did stop spinning. The moment was frozen in time for us, but not for that giant fish. Whilst we dithered, the roach did not, but righted itself and dived irretrievably into the thick mat of marginal weed. There it stuck fast, swirled once and broke the line. This was devastating, we wanted that red-eyed monster more than anything, almost, in life. I quoted the “cannot lose what you have never had” baloney and if ever a look could kill then Great Mate shot me with it. We fished on in the gathering gloom of mind and fading November day, but our heart wasn’t in it and the promised monsoon drove us off the flood plain, feeling damp and dismal to our core.

Now, I have lost many fish that have made me angry or sad, but there have been just a couple that have broken not just my line but wrecked my life. One was a Baltic pike that broke free one April day in 1994. The guide put it at 60lb and it probably was all of that.

Bad? Very bad. But not as bad as an August day at Letheringsett Lake in 1963. That summer I was “into” eels in a serious way and had taken “snakes” to five pounds and a bit from the Cley marshes, Holkham lake, Bayfield lake, Bodham pit and of course, Letheringsett.

I was only a kid, but I knew what I was doing when I pinned a roach head into the shadows cast by the island on that beautiful lake. It was hot, too hot, but that didn’t stop the line hissing out a little after noon. I hit into something akin to a raging bull. I pulled until my puny biceps ached, until my back seized, until the sweat swamped my face. The more I pulled, the harder the damned eel pulled back, but at last I saw it and I swear that fish was twice the size of anything I had hooked before. Ten yards out the “thing” writhed, lashed the water to foam and the hook straightened. I have never recovered. I’ll take the ache with me to the grave.

I have a last memory to compete with that tale of eel horror and this time we are on Gorgate Lake outside Dereham in the 1980s. The late, but very great, crucian carp angler Bernie Neave was plying his trade one hot morning and I was an admiring spectator from high up on the bank behind him. The light illuminated his swim and I could watch the crucians coming and going and getting caught. Bernie had a bag of crackers, a real crock of gold, but there was one fish that eluded him morning long.

Then, right at the end of the session, it ghosted out, sucked in the corn and was hooked. Bernie never believed me but I watched it crash to freedom in the tree roots and I knew it was six pounds, a new UK record.

There you have it. A lost Avon redfin and a potential record-busting pike, eel and crucian, all gone, leaving nothing but despair.

"Can’t lose what you have never had”? Never ever taunt me with that trite bit of idiot’s wisdom again!