Angler's elbow

I'm often asked to recommend fishing gear. A lot depends on your pocket. You don't need to spend a fortune on gear just as you don't need to spend a fortune on a car. But some people do. I'm writing for Financial Times readers who my editorial masters believe have bottomless pockets. It's not true.

The rich don't get rich by spending their money. Some of the wealthiest anglers I know have turned out on the river with some of the scruffiest gear imaginable. But they still catch fish if they know what they're doing.

I try to strike a happy medium, mentioning some of the best gear but also suggesting some ideas for compromise. See what you think. I have just got back from a taimen fishing trip in Mongolia but the appearance of that write-up will have to wait a while since it's scheduled for a future edition of the FT's How To Spend It magazine.

I plan to cover some conservation issues in my next fishing column - from mussels to mink to water cress. The next step, I suppose, is to plan some more fishing trips but just now I'm fished out. I've been suffering from tendinitis in my right elbow, brought on by persistent yanking of a surface lure to attract taimen. Does this qualify as an industrial injury?

If you want to get in to fly fishing or if you are simply in the market for some new gear I'm happy to recommend any of the dealers mentioned at the end of the article. I'm particularly pleased to see a new tackle dealer in London. Grainger's is just outside South Kensington underground station. Expect friendly service if you go there and it's real fishing shop not a fashion shop with tackle at the rear.

Is £20m enough for you?

John Charman, an insurance underwriter, has paid his estranged wife, Beverley, £20m in a divorce settlement. The High Court has ordered him to pay her £48m. Now he is appealing the decision, arguing that £20m should be enough for any ex-wife.

There's nothing like a big court battle over personal dosh to stimulate salivary glands all across the home counties and all those other belts of middle-class conservatism up and down the UK. This is why page 3 of the Daily Telegraph (it's very own titillation page) today features the Charman divorce alongside a "taster" for a much bigger one to come - Mills v McCartney.

Mr Charman says he is battling for justice, "not just for me but for all decent, law-abiding, successful business people facing divorce." Call me an old cynic but, if you ever sought a definition for the word "minority", there you have it. It's not often that you read the words "decent", "successful", "law abiding", and "business people" in the same sentence.

Of course Appeal Court Judges are incapable of being swayed one way or the other by a newspaper article sympathetic to a wealthy 54-year-old man who can have nothing whatsoever in common with middle-aged bewigged and relatively impecunious lawyers.

Poor lady

But we are. I wonder how many people saw the picture of Mrs Charman stepping out of her BMW "4x4 alongside a picture of her grand home in Sevenoaks, then read about her £500,000 a year income after tax, and thought: "Oh that poor, poor lady, she should take him for all he has"? Did you?

There are a few details about Mr Charman that I admire. He is a self-made man who came up the hard way in a business that, when he joined, as he points out, could hardly be described as a meritocracy.

Now he lives in a tax haven, at the helm of an almost £3bn market cap company that he founded. I can excuse him all that, but does he have to wear a chunky gold ring on his left little pinkie? I hate overstated male jewellery. It's not even metrosexual.

Boring Bermuda

For the rest, well, he has to live with it. Have you been to Bermuda? It's the most boring island on the planet. The fishing isn't great either. Why David Bowie should choose to have a house there, God only knows. What kind of place fixes its male business attire as suit jacket and tie with shorts, brogues and knee-length socks?

The Charmans must enjoy this sort of thing - the court battle, that is. I suppose it brings both of them the 15-minutes of fame that so many crave these days. They can dine out for years on all this stuff. It certainly keeps the Telegraph readers entertained.

Whatever the outcome for Mrs Charman, she should stay well clear of Bermuda. On the harbour wall there is a working model of a ducking stool that the island once used to deal with difficult wives. I bet there are one or two Bermudian men who wish they still used it today.

Lies, damned lies, and so-called fishing flies

Some people fish for salmon using spinners. Some people fish using flies. Some salmon waters have banned spinners (that are much easier to cast and generally easier to fish with), declaring them fly only.

Now some wise guys at Grays of Kilsyth have produced the spinhead, a spinner attachment for your fly. If this is used on a fly-only water it is downright cheating. In water that permits spinning there may be an argument for casting something like this with your fly rod but I can't, for the life of me, think what it is. In fact there is no real difference between using this device and attaching a Mepps spinner to your fly leader. The fly-only rivers should move swiftly to ban its use on their waters.

If all you want to know is: "Will it catch fish?" Of course it will. I discussed these moves to create "spinning flies" in one of my fishing columns here. Here is an article trying to justify its use.

Saturday junk

One of life's luxuries is a Saturday morning at home, reading the newspapers. One of life's little irritations is the junk that falls out of those newspapers when you open them.

So I just want to relay this message to the Isle of Man Department of Toursim and Leisure, The Spirit of Adventure Cruise Ship, City Index spread betting, Acer Computers, Dell Computers, Cotton Traders, Telegraph Home, Vobage call service, The National Trust (already a member) and Magnet kitchens. Your mail is in the bin. It went into the bin last week and it will go there next week and the week after that.

I don't buy your products (apart from the National Trust and since your mail was aimed at new members your material was irrelevant). I do buy fishing equipment, occasional bits of clothing, food, train tickets, petrol and books. But not much else.

How long can this waste continue? Short of inventing some particularly sadistic torture for the marketing heads of these companies I'm struggling to think of a solution.

Maybe I should fish the leaflets out of the bin and pass on these exciting commercial opportunities to someone who might value them. I have picked out just one of these companies. It happens to be Dell. Now who in this rogues'gallery of senior Dell executives deserves to get my personal mail shot of leaflets from the aforementioned companies? I suggest Richard L. "Dick" Hunter, Vice President Customer Experience. Two reasons: it's part of his remit and he isn't wearing a tie (standing out from the crowd Dick, always dangerous). Imagine if everyone who received junk mail started sending it back to the marketing heads of those companies churning it out. It's in your hands folks. Happy reading Dick.