- ID
- cx187
- Title
- The Biggest Pike in the World
- Genre
- Essay
- Page Count
- 1
- Word Count
- 1400
- Publisher
- Field
- Publication Year
- 1948
- Document Types
- Full-text Online
- Nature Writing
- Eads, Additions to
- Added since 2020
- Topics
- Fishing
Bates relates his excitement in catching a very large pike while fishing in the lake 'in the centre of our village.'
Serving as a writer for the R.A.F., Bates had 'a commanding officer of sense and indulgence who understood that one of the surest places for thinking clearly in this muddled world is at the end of a fishing rod'.
The fishing outing occurred on returning to Kent to write about a recent visit to 'one of those vast American airfields that have now gone back to corn and cattle in the gentle valleys of the Eastern Midlands'. Bates wrote two articles about the airfield: My Grandfather’s Farm (1944) and They Have Left the Farm (1945), thus providing a possible date for the fishing episode.
In The Field (London, May 29, 1948, p. 604, attached).
