This might well sound like a blatant plug, but I do have more than crude commercialism in mind - honest.

Next month, 'How We Fish - The Love, Life and Joy of the Riverbank' by Paul Whitehouse and John Bailey hits a book shop near you. I’m sure it will sell faster than anything Prince Harry can cobble together, so hurry to avoid disappointment... or most probably not as the case might turn out to be. Whatever, I have a solid point I want to make about my first tome for many years.

'In Visible Waters' - my first book - was published an extraordinary 39 years ago and did well enough (largely because of Chris Turnbull’s magical artwork) to make me fancy myself as a full-time writer. Many more titles of uneven quality followed, but in my more callow years I never doubted I had something to say, even when I palpably did not. But that didn’t stop me, not at all.

Now, though, when I might have something left worthwhile to contribute, I was assailed by doubts, as was Mr Whitehouse. All these years on, I realise what a privilege it is to get yourself into print, to think your words sufficiently important to eat up the precious time of readers. Paul was of the same mind and, truly, we agonised if we had anything to say worth the paper it was written on.

In the event, I like to think that 'How We Fish' has turned into a sort of love letter to the sport both Paul and I love, even beyond football! You might expect that, coming from the angling experiences of two men of a certain age, a mish mash of nostalgia and yearning for a past that is irredeemably dead and buried. There’s a bit of that, probably, but I still feel that what we have produced is more valid than that alone. The fact that the TV series, 'Mortimer and Whitehouse, Gone Fishing', is so enduringly popular leads me to think that some change in angling might be in the air.

A significant amount of my work is taken up with guiding, most especially for coarse fish but sometimes for salmonids, grayling notably. Typically, my clients are male, but not always by any means. Most of them are aged between between 45 and 85, but I’m happy to say I do have a fair number of millennials. Judging by the amount of repeat business I get, I must be doing something right and I think I know why that is... simply presenting fishing like it used to be, with skills and values that can seem to be lost. It would appear there is a silent and significant minority of fishers that want very little to do with fishing as it is carried out today.

These overlooked anglers don’t want tackle shops groaning with gear they have no idea how to use. They don’t want to catch carp, carp and more carp. They don’t want rigs that hook the fish for them and they don’t want to spend 48 hours at a stretch, perhaps without a bite. They don’t want to sit behind otter fences, completely segregated from nature. They don’t want a removal van to carry their mountain of gear and they don’t want the banks to be endless deserts of wood chip. They don’t want to catch fish with names, fish with disfigured mouths, or fish that arrived the day before from a stew pond.

What they want is waters that are natural and where watercraft is still a skill that needs to be practised. They want mobility, the chance to explore waters, not be chained to a peg session or day long. They want wild fish that are hard to catch. They want tench and rudd and crucians and fish of a pound  that are beautiful and probably uncaught previously. They want to float fish, to bounce baits, to sight fish, to fish on the top, to fly fish even. They want a challenge, an experience and they want to learn in an active, engaging way. They want to make lovely memories, not simply compile nets full of mediocre fish.

I’m well aware that pro carp waters will continue to flourish and that commercial carp waters will always satisfy a need, but is it too much to ask that waters could be created and managed that don’t fall into these two categories?

I’d love to be 50 again, to take a lease out on five miles of the Wensum, stock it with roach, protect them and offer days of winter trotting. I’d love to lease a 15-acre lake, sell off many of the carp and let the tench stocks breathe again. I’d love to create ponds, full of smaller species and garlanded with wild flowers.

Turning back the angling clock I don’t see as a retrograde step but rather a way of making the sport acceptable again to the many who are turned off by what it has become.

'The Love, Life and Joy of the Riverbank' could be more our future than our past.