I finished last week by promising some piscatorial reflections from the past half century here in East Anglia, and I guess it’s right to begin in the 1970s.

I could delve back further still, but they would be largely childhood memories of anglers, sadly who have largely passed, and of angling that too has largely disappeared.

In the 1970s I was reaching my own adulthood and, in many ways, so was angling. What a decade that was. I’d swap the fishing we have now for what we had then in an instant. Yes, there were few carp waters. Yes, tench and bream hadn’t reached their modern, silly weights. But what we experienced then more than made up these artificialities.

There were scores of superb rudd waters where the fish were those genuine, slab-sided galleons of gold. There were huge dace in almost every single stream and river, fish of a pound and over, not those few sprat-sized apologies we have today. The rivers, too, bristled with perch and there were far more lakes with decent tench and bream than we have today. Above all, we had wild carp in numbers and crucian carp in profusion. Blimey, you wanted a crucian then and you were simply swamped with choices.

Let’s not forget clonking great wild river trout and oodles of sea trout along the north Norfolk coast - along with mighty cod still, let’s remember. Leviathan pike probably hadn’t recovered from prynesium scourges late in the 1960s, but the Broads were on their way back and we still had the estate lakes and the emerging pit pike scene.

But, of course, above all these species, we had roach. The Bure, the Glaven, the Waveney, the Yare and the historic Wensum all produced roach in sizes and numbers that you can barely credit today.

'Youngsters' under the age of 60, say, probably are tired of old roach stories but the reality was better than the legend. From Fakenham to Norwich the river seethed with 2lb-plus fish, to the point we young Turks tried hard to isolate stretches where most fish were over 2lb 12oz. Yes, where most were closing on 3lb. I remember a cold, bright Sunday morning above Lyng Mill around 1976 perhaps. John Wilson had trotted there with good results in the company of the roach god Jimmy Sapey, but lunch with kids Lee and Lisa was calling and he had minutes to go. Three casts, he said - 2lb 13oz, 2lb 14oz and 2lb 15oz the roach were, in that order. I netted my first 'three' around that time after a run of at least 70 roach in excess of 2lb 12oz. Yes, it was that good. Surely, the best roaching in recorded history?

John’s Tackle Den down Bridewell Alley in Norwich was an Aladdin’s cave to us younger 'specimen hunters' and Wilson was the sorcerer. The tiny little shop was a hive of excitement and innovation and all us disciples believed we were on the cutting edge of angling development. When dear Tom Boulton took over his shop at Mile Cross our riches increased two-fold: now we had a skilled match angler to offer his thoughts and refinements. There were times when anglers like John Judge, John Nunn, Bernie Neave and the like must have thought their angling world was on fire. I know I did.

Let’s give examples. Chub had just come to Norfolk rivers and we were working out fluid, roving ways of catching them. Quivertip rods were largely unavailable commercially so we made our own, agog with a whole new way of fishing. Pre-baiting became a thrilling and effective concept but above all, the revolutionary 'maggot feeder' approach was pioneered on Norfolk lakes like Wolterton,codenamed the Marsh, and for a time the most celebrated tench water in the UK.

For much of the decade I lived in the Wensum valley, in a succession of old, cold and quaint cottages. My life was dominated by that river, by its dusks and dawns and by the magical loneliness of its flood plains. My dreams were riddled with roach, autumn to spring, and great tench, bream, crucians and sea trout summer through. There was always some monster to photograph and the pubs at Lyng stayed open late. Why wouldn’t an old guy want to go back to those days?

Now, looking back, I fear we have lost way more than we have gained. Back then, the great heroes of the mid-century like Frank Wright and Billy Giles were stepping back and the 'Wilson Lads' were stepping up. But the scene was still quaintly old fashioned in many appealing aspects. We still fished in largely traditional ways with just tweaks added to gear and approaches. Probably without knowing it, we were slowly preparing for the lift-off to angling modernity that was the 1980s - I’ll look at these exploding years next week.