"Angling," according to Izaak Walton, "may be said to be like mathematics in that it can never be fully learnt." This, however, did not stop Walton from dispensing many useful tips to would-be fishermen. Indeed, his advice on the relevance of wind direction to the angler adorns the bar of many a country pub, even to this very day:
When the wind is in the north
The skilful fisher goes not forth;
When the wind is in the east
'Tis neither good for man nor beast;
When the wind is in the south,
It blows the flies in the fish's mouth;
But when the wind is in the west,
There it is the very best.
Walton was born in Stafford in 1593. In his youth, he was apprenticed to a London ironmonger, but he became successful enough in business to retire to his native Staffordshire in 1644, and it was there he indulged his passion for fly-fishing and penned his classic masterpiece, The Compleat Angler - or the Contemplative Man's Recreation.
Published in 1653, Walton's book combined practical information for the rod fisherman with snatches of mythology and folklore and was adorned with quotations from the classics - from writers as diverse as Pliny and du Bartas to Walton's own close friend, George Herbert.
It drew an idyllic picture of a rural life of well-kept inns and tuneful milkmaids, with pastoral interludes of song and verse and homely entertainment - typified, as he puts it himself, by "an honest ale-house where we shall find a cleanly room, lavender in the windows, and twenty ballads stuck about the walls".
Strangely enough, a 19th century Irish expert on the subject, a Colonel St Leger Moore, was in almost complete agreement with Walton on the importance of the wind direction: "The best weather for catching fish in Irish rivers," he wrote, "is when the wind is south or west and rain has just begun to fall before a flood. One is almost certain then to take a catch, however bad the fishing may have been the day before.
"It is hopeless, however," Moore goes on, "when the flood is high and the water is discoloured. Light, too, is most important: the fish apparently do not see the fly - or do not care to see it - when the clouds are very low and the sky too much overcast; a bright sky, on the other hand, is also bad - because probably the fish can see the gut and that the fly is an artificial product, not something good to eat or worthy of attack."