New game fishing book tells of Teesdale angler Thomas Taylor

He was also handy with his fists.

His story is told in a new book that is overflowing with pisciculturists, tackle inventors, hook-makers, fly-dressers, river-watchers and anglers.

The book, Game Fishing in the North Country, has been compiled by retired Durham policeman, John Austin, after many years of research. It is already being described by Classic Angling magazine as “the most important book on angling in the North Country to be produced so far this century” as it tells the stories of men who created hatcheries and invented the tackle and the flies.

Game Fishing in the North Country by John Austin

Men like Thomas Ford, the Swaledale master of a Wesleyan school in Gunnerside, who in February 1864, advertised in the Richmond and Ripon Chronicle – which is now part of the Darlington & Stockton Times – as he was selling “twelve superior artificial trout flies” in return for 18 penny postage stamps.

“Eight years practise with the above enables the advertiser to strongly recommend them,” he says.

Read more: Farewell to Jon Smith, journalist, lecturer and historian

Or men like Stephen Philip Lowthian Johnson, of Enterpen Hall near Hutton Rudby, who was such a keen fisherman that when he was shot down over the Netherlands in 1942 and captured, he wrote his first book, Fishing from Afar. When freed, he returned to the UK, resumed work as a vet, and created a sea-trout fly called the Camasunary Killer, which was named after a bay on the family’s estate on the Isle of Skye.

An angler's guide to the Tees by Joseph Forestall Smythe, of Darlington. Mr Smythe had a large fishing tackle and gunsmith's shop in Blackwellgate. In October 1894, his cartridge loading room exploded, killing his apprentice, and doing much damage

But few of the stories are as eye-catching as that of Thomas Taylor, born in Barney in 1814, and who made his name as an angler in 1847 when he caught 52 trout in four hours in the River Tees – an “enormous quantity”.

His skills as a hunter and fisher came to the attention of Sir Frederick Milbank, who was the MP for North Yorkshire from 1865 to 1886. Sir Frederick took Tom with him as a ghillie on sporting excursions. On one, on the Isle of Arran, Sir Frederick was taken ill with lung inflammation out in the field and, with no medical assistance nearby, Tom immediately put his apprentice butchering skills into action and bled Sir Frederick.

Sir Frederick Milbank, of Barningham Park, who protected poacher Tom Taylor from the wrath of the courts after Tom saved his life

Sir Frederick survived and Tom was hailed a hero.

It added to Tom’s colourful reputation as Teesdale’s most talented sportsman, who wasn’t afraid to resort to illegitimate means to catch his prey, or to his fists to settle any disputes. In May 1857, the champion fly-fisher of Penrith, John Broughton, challenged the Teesdale tyro to a fishing match on the River Eden.

Weight of catch would determine the winner, and Tom took an early lead until the fish ceased to rise for him. He plodged upstream round a bend and discovered another angler midstream, disturbing the fish – probably a deliberate tactic by Broughton’s backers who had money riding on his success.

Read more fascinating stories of local history on our dedicated Looking Back page

Tom asked the angler to desist, and when he refused, Tom took off his watch, handing it to the umpire saying he could keep it if he didn’t return to reclaim it, and launched himself at his rival, using his skills as a swimmer – he had rescued several people from the Tees – to pin him underwater.

The Durham Ranger was one of the most popular salmon flies of the 1840s. It was designed by Durham solicitor Walter Scruton. A Durham police officer became obsessed, perhaps with good reason, by the notion Scruton was having an affair with his wife,

“He held his opponent down till the man seemed drowned, and then dragged him out by his hair,” wrote an eye-witness. “But the man suddenly revived so Tom held his hair with one hand and pummelled his face with the other, till, as he said, “I fairly blinded him; he couldn’t fish again”, and he left him on the bank to be taken or led home.

Subscribe to the D&S Times online for just £1 for 1 month

“He then took his watch from the umpire and renewed his fishing, had very good sport and on the second day he had no interruption.”

Even in Teesdale, Tom was prepared to bend the rules to catch his fish. He was employed by the Fishery Board as a river-watcher, keeping an eye on fish stocks, but he was renowned as a poacher, often caught red-handed by the police. However, because he had saved Sir Frederick’s life, Sir Frederick always ensured that there wasn’t enough evidence to place before magistrates.

A fishing tackle catalogue by WJ Cummins, of Bishop Auckland, one of the biggest tackle dealers in the district

This nobbling of the cases became so blatant in September 1877 that Thomas Hill, the Chief Constable of the North Riding, personally oversaw Tom’s prosecution and he received the maximum fine of £5.

However, in October 1878, the Chief Constable was himself prosecuted for fishing without a licence and was himself fined £5 by Darlington magistrates.

Who knew that the contemplative sport of angling could be so exciting, but all these characters from the old days and their techniques come to life in the hands of author John Austin – there are no flies on him.

• Game Fishing in the North Country: An Historical Miscellany, by John Austin is published by Coch-y-Bonddu Books, which specialises in angling books, for £35 hardback. Go to anglebooks.com for more details.