An old diary recently threw up the sobering news that I first fished at the Kingfisher Lake at Lyng on October 3, 1973... or rather I trotted the Wensum behind the lake and had a 2lb 5oz fish on the point of dusk.

A while after that I joined the Norfolk Fly Fishers, who then rented the water from Cyril Rogers and 40 years ago took my first 30lb pike there at 36lb 6oz. I drifted away in the 90s, but took over the running of the carp syndicate in 2007, something I have been doing erratically ever since. These are the bare bones of the matter and a few days on the bank there last week brought back more important memories in all their richness.

Whilst 'Kingi' is a glorious fishery - and more of that soon - it has always been the people who have made it so special. Back 40 years ago, I revelled in the company there of the Broadland pike heroes I had in my youth worshipped from afar. Bill Giles, Reg Sandys, Frank Wright, Jim Knight, Michael Robbins, Jack Fitt, Roger Gibbons and many more made me welcome, made me feel at home and made Kingfisher far more than just a place where big pike lived.

It really was those early 80s days that first made me realise that it’s not what you catch but where you catch and with whom. This sentiment has only deepened with age. Today, though the trouters have been replaced by carpers, Jon, Mick, Stu, Jenny and all the other club members maintain that tradition of companionship and warmth. You really can have the best fishery in the world, but if it is without the glow of friendship, then it is nothing. Some of today’s hard-nosed venues might just learn from this model?

Kingfisher was always a magnificent place to cast out a line, perhaps the most beautiful of all Norfolk waters if we take the estate lakes out of the equation. To sit on the island and look out northwards across the water to the river and then to the gently rising downs beyond is a delight, whatever the fish are doing. The holiday apartments constructed at the turn of the century demand to be ignored, but the current groundsman, Darren, has made the banks more lovely than I have ever seen them. Perhaps the sport these last few days has been slow, but Darren’s achievements more than compensated, especially early morning when the whole valley lay silvered under dew and you remembered what very bliss is it to be alive.

Back in the Fly Fishers’ days, the trout were exceptional, but so were the coarse fish. This half century past, Kingfisher truly has held monsters of every species. My '30' pike was only one of several leviathans and there were roach, too, present in big numbers and of colossal sizes. I remember a 16lb bream taken on a green fly stripped back past and though I didn’t see it, I believe an eel way over 10lb was taken from the hut bay on a hook laden with trout guts.

For a long while, the record Norfolk carp lived here and these past decades have produced legions of tench in excess of nine pounds. And, as for perch, I swear a six-pounder lived under the bridge to the island. I know - I hooked and lost it after a battle that left me battered, bruised and disgusted with myself. Still, what a place of monsters this place has been.

Over half a century then, Kingfisher has brought joy to hundreds if not thousands of anglers, male and female, young and old. I count myself extraordinarily lucky in my fishing life, not least because of this exceptional venue that I loved from the moment I set my eyes and wellington boots upon it. It has given me and so many others great fish, great memories and moments that have been simply golden.

It is only my love for its waters that make me sound a word of caution. I have noticed at Kingi and at other pits in the Wensum valley catchment area, a decline in fly life and in the numbers and sizes of cyprinid species, other than carp, which are often artificially introduced. Kingi did not produce nearly the bream and tench I expected this time round, not even with constant south westerly winds and a relatively stable barometer. Nor were there nearly the number of swifts, swallows, oyster catchers and terns that my old diaries all have record of. Still waters are notoriously volatile and I pray that I am either alarmist or that this is just a blip in Kingi’s long and illustrious career. I’d love to think there are many years left in the old girl yet!