Spend time scanning the shelves marked fishing in your local bookstore, or start interrogating your favourite search engine with (let’s say) river and fly-fishing, or trout and stillwaters…
… and chances are good that you’ll soon find at least one volume with Peter Lapsley’s name on the spine.
And with very good reason. Since the early 1980s, when he qualified as a game angling instructor and spent 7 years developing the complex of trout lakes at Rockbourne near Salisbury, Peter has become one of our sport’s most respected figureheads, and one of the most outspoken (yet personally self-effacing) ambassadors for responsible angling and conservation.
As such, he’s a prolific, thoughtful and authoritative writer, having contributed at least one article to every single issue of Fly Fishing and Fly Tying magazine since its inception in 1990, including this profile of the Wandle project just over a year ago, whilst remaining unafraid to tackle some of the gnarliest conservation issues of our time.
Less widely known are his continuing editorships of the internationally-respected British Medical Journal, as well as the Flyfishers’ Club Journal … and his collaboration with Michael Russell to ghost-write the actual bestselling memoirs of JR Hartley.
Bookended by these, there’s at least another foot of solid literature in the form of:
- The Bankside Book of Stillwater Trout Flies (1978)
- Trout From Stillwaters (1981)
- Successful Small-Stillwater Trouting (1982)
- River Trout Flyfishing (1988)
- The Complete Fly Fisher (editor and contributor) (1990)
- Fly Fishing for Trout (1992)
- Fishing for Falklands Sea Trout (2000)
- River Fly-Fishing, the complete guide (2003)
- The Pocket Guide to Matching the Hatch (co-authored with Dr Cyril Bennett) (2010)
As you stand back and stare at all that wealth of knowledge, it’s hard not to reckon that Peter has probably already forgotten more about fishing than the rest of us are ever likely to learn.
But on the excellent chance that he’ll continue to share that wisdom with us, for the benefit of the Club, the Wandle and angling in general, we’re immensely honoured to welcome him as the new Honorary President of the Wandle Piscators!