By our calculations, this was the 8th Wandle Piscators’ Annual Dinner… a tradition which started in 2004 at London’s Savile Club before moving to the slightly more pastoral surroundings of the Wandle Valley in 2007.
Very professionally briefed by Adrian Grose-Hodge for the second year running, Rosanna and her staff at the William Morris did us proud with a mouthwatering menu…
… and 21 Wands and our guests (Bella Davies from the Wandle Trust and Peter O’Connell from Sutton Council) enjoyed another memorable evening of tall tales, fishy banter, and prizes for everyone from the Fiver in a Creel fundraising raffle.
Tony Hutchinson and Steve Dedman brought last year’s Wands Cup and Species Hunt trophy back for the night… and promptly removed them again for another season, stimulating feverish speculation as to how the rest of us could possibly prise those coveted pots from their seemingly permanent grasp.
Our conclusion?
We’ll all just have to fish harder, smarter… and catch more Wandle fish than Steve’s barbel, bream, bullhead, chub, dace, eel, goldfish, gudgeon, perch, roach, rudd, ruffe, stickleback, tench, trout and 3 kinds of carp!
(All photos: thanks to Duncan Soar)