So what's the catch

My dad took me fishing in Richmond Park, in London, when I was six. My "rod" was a bamboo stick with a piece of string and a bent pin, and, to my utter amazement, I caught a mackerel. It was only many years later, when I was recounting the story for the umpteenth time that dad finally admitted that it had been a scam: he had bought the fish on the way to the park and put it on my hook when I wasn't looking.

My first "proper" catch was a 2½lb perch that I landed on Lough Corrib in Ireland. We ate it and it was quite delicious. That experience taught me that coarse fish could be good eating, and ever since I've eaten fish that other people don't necessarily rate. Pike is excellent, and carp is outstanding with its rich flesh and curdy flakes of meat. But it all depends on the quality of the water they live in.

There used to be a terrible snobbery about coarse fishing, particularly in the south. That's gone now, but we still lack the continental openness to eating coarse fish.

Fishing is my first choice of recreational escape if I can grab half a day off. In the summer, after school, I take the kids out on the boat. My eldest boy, Oscar, who's eight, is mad keen. The first time we went out this summer, we fished for a couple of hours off a wreck nine miles from Portland Bill. Oscar caught a 6lb bass and an 8lb pollack, then another bass and another pollack. Afterwards I had to explain to him that he might not have such a good afternoon's fishing for the next 20 years.

I love fishing, but there's a direct and rather short connection between the fishing and the eating. We often take what I call my cornershop sashimi kit, which is a pot of Colman's English mustard - pretty much as good as wasabi - and a bottle of light soy sauce. When we catch mackerel, we simply slice fillets off (the mackerel has to be very fresh), and dab them in the mustard and the soy sauce on the boat. Once tasted, never forgotten.

People are frightened of overcooking fish. There's a very simple principle underlying all fish cookery, which is that when a fish is hot in the middle it's cooked. So whether you're barbecuing or frying or poaching or baking or grilling, you're simply trying to get the heat to the middle of the fish, and the more heat, the easier it is to get to the middle.