One change from the original No Need To Lie,
is the addition of a piece Peter Thomas wrote about when he first fished with Dick.
It was Peter who eventually convinced Dick to write the book, after a ten year campaign.
Here is that piece:
I FIRST fished with my dear friend the late Richard Walker in 1934 and continued to fish with him until shortly before he died in 1985.
In those innocent days, before Richard became famous, we flyfished the Hertfordshire chalk streams for wild brown trout, and years later fished them again. But as Richard’s fame grew, we had to concentrate on catching coarse fish, to provide material for his weekly column in the Angling Times, and other angling journals.
Unlike most authors, Richard had the ability of rejecting accepted practise when approaching perennial angling problems, such as how to land a powerful fish like the carp on light tackle – by dismissing the use of such tackle in the first place. Richard’s answer was to completely redesign the tackle and revise the ‘modus operandi’, thus in one stroke discarding the accepted wisdom of carp fishing.
Richard devised a method of catching the huge – previously uncatchable – perch known to lurk in the deepest parts of Arlesey Lake in Bedfordshire. I think that this deed endeared him to thinking anglers more than anything else.
Through his skills and ingenuity Richard achieved a string of big fish-catches, and I felt strongly that these should be brought together for his readers.
My only contribution to his success was being an enthusiastic companion who would warmly respond to any proposal to go fishing anywhere and at any time.
PETER THOMAS
(No Need To Lie 50th Anniversary Edition - Pete on dust jack inside flap)
