How do you troll

I did some trolling on Lake Windermere back in the Summer of 1983. It was blazing hot, and I was out in a little rowing boat with my dad and, I think, my big sister. My aim was to catch char, a fairly rare member of the trout family that lives in a number of lakes in that part of the country.

The method involved dropping a line over the back of the boat while my dad (a) dropped part of my new fishing rod over the side, never to be seen again and (b) rowed patiently across Pull Wyke, one of the deeper parts of the lake. Attached to the line was a special weight and, at the very far end, a little metal lure that would flutter in the water, the plan being that the flashing and fluttering of the lure would trigger an aggressive response from the predatory char and result in me catching it.

Despite my having to use a rather shortened fishing rod (thanks dad) I did manage to catch three fish that day. One trout, one char and one fish that, after my father had eaten it and I had the photos back from Truprint about four weeks later, turned out to be a young salmon below the legal limit for keeping. All three were small but very tasty, and the owner of the rowing boat was genuinely surprised that an idiot like me was capable of catching such things.