I posted this online for Mother’s Day; I lost mine some years ago, and I wrote this last year, about my mam.
First Lady First Fish
John Graves was a stoneman for the National Coal Board. Not the most enjoyable job, it involved watching a conveyor carry pieces of coal past you in a jagged stream, while you identify and remove all the pieces of stone. It was cold, hard, and filthy dirty work, but John always said it was a ‘doddle’ compared to the day he visited Anzio with the British 1st Infantry Division in the Winter of 1944.
His friends called him Jack Greaves, in the pitmatic language they all spoke. He was married to Olive and lived ‘doon the raas’ in a terraced street of tiny cottages leading directly to the Doctor Pit in Bedlington.
Of Jack’s four children, the apple of his eye was Rose. He took her shooting and fishing from the age of seven; he called her ‘Wor Blonde’ and she idolised him.
Rose Graves grew up an adventurous and confident child and told me the first time she remembers meeting my dad, he asked her and her friends if he could join in their game of cricket. She responded by bouncing a half brick off his head.
Years later, when my dad returned to Bedlington from overseas, tanned from Egypt and wearing his impressive uniform with sergeant’s stripes, he persuaded Rose to marry him and join him on his world tour of army bases.
In army medical facilities in West Germany, Rose Hutton delivered my sister first, Roseanne, and then in the winter of 1959, I entered the world in Rinteln, Lower Saxony.
Mam told me that in Germany, resentment still burned against the British Army on the Rhine, and she said she would have to be vigilant to prevent Germans from spitting in the pram if they thought she wasn’t looking.
She saw Germany; she toured down the Rhine, and visited the Netherlands, and then she lived for a while in Seramban in Malaysia. She always referred to it as Malaya, as it was in her day, from the days of the empire.
In Seramban, we lived in a massive villa, with a cook, a servant and a gardener. Outside the fence was dense jungle teaming with things that bite up to and including tigers. There were crocodiles in the river, fire ants in the garden and snakes would visit through the wire-link fence.
Eventually my dad left the army and joined the Civil Service in Bedlington. Mam brought us up while he worked, and when we were older, she worked in Welwyn Electric making resisters.
When they moved to Bedlington, Mam and Dad both began fishing again on the River Coquet, where they both had learned the art of salmon fishing in their youth. They both had bags of tackle, good quality rods and waders, and bought a season ticket every year to fish for the whole season.
Every year, like all the other local salmon fishers, my parents would compete to catch the ‘Springer’ or first salmon.
Traditionally, the first salmon caught on a river was believed by the celts to give the gift of second sight or seeing into the future.
Perhaps for this reason, the owner of the River Coquet, the Duke of Northumberland is entitled to the first fish, and the lucky angler is invited to Alnwick Castle to hand over the fish in person, and receive a small cup for life, a huge cup for one year, with your name engraved on it, and free fishing in the River Coquet for three years.
Jack Graves had tried his whole life to catch the first fish, and when he knew he was dying, he made a last request to Rose, his daughter. As she said:
“He always wanted to win this trophy, and when he became ill, he said he wanted me to get it. It was always my ambition to win it while he was alive. Unfortunately, I didn’t.”
On the morning of Friday, the 2nd February 1979, my parents left the house at the crack of dawn to drive to Warkworth. They parked near the River Coquet and got set up to fish.
There are many likely spots to fish for salmon on the Coquet; in the Warkworth area these include such names as Betts Hole, the Clarty Hole, the Grandstand, the White Post, the Streamfoot, and the Hermitage.
For some reason they chose to fish at Coquet Lodge, well above the tidal stretch of the river, and this was the key to Mam’s success that day.
She cast out with a 2 ½” yellow-belly spinner and a spinning rod. The water was so cold that morning, she had to wade out to warm up every half hour. After two hours of this, she got a bite. A 12 ½lb salmon took the lure and the fight was on!
Mam said the fight was not so hard as some fish she has landed. She caught her first salmon at 15 and the largest she ever landed was 21lb, in Scotland on the River Lochy.
“I got a bite and just brought the salmon in. It was quite an easy catch.” Mam told the local reporters afterwards:
“This has been my ambition for years. I can hardly believe I have done it. I am so thrilled.”
“I presented the salmon to the Duke at Alnwick Castle and the hour I spent there was like a dream come true. He said he was delighted that a woman had at last caught the first salmon.”
To this day, the first salmon on the River Coquet has only ever been caught by one woman – my mam – Rose Hutton.