Tony Miles R.I.P.

While looking at some angling related blogs, I am shocked to discover that Tony Miles has passed away.  I knew he had had a heart attack last year and had only got back into fishing in the last six months or so.  Apparently he died on a fishing trip on the Ouse - perhaps a good way for him to go, but many years earlier than he might have.

I first met Tony on the River Leam near Leamington when I was about 14 in the late 1970s.  He often wrote fishing articles for the Coventry Evening Telegraph or the Sports Argus that my dad used to buy on a Saturday.  As a result of his writings, barbel and chub fishing became my favourite type of fishing.

Over the years, he has been my favourite fishing writer by a long way.  I have 8 of his books and indeed I was planning to read two of them over Christmas - Elite Barbel and 50 years on the Ouse.

We met again, quite a few years later, on the Hampshire Avon where Tony was spending a couple of days preparing an article for Practical Course Fishing magazine.  Much to my surprise, he featured me quite heavily in the feature and included a photo he took that day of me float fishing in his Fishing for Big Chub book a few years later.

We struck up a good correspondence after that and probably shared about two dozen letters over the next couple of years, mainly discussing small river barbel tactics.

I last had contact with him about a year ago when we swapped a few emails about a small pocket of huge barbel that I had discovered in a local river and which I thought he might be interested in having a go at - don't think he ever did though

Very sad news indeed.