One of the truly great delights for me, possibly you too, is fishing unexpectedly. Chance moments snatched from eternity. They are the sparkling gems that make fishing so precious and enjoyable.

Last weekend saw me at the splendid Yorkshire Game Fair, doing the usual line and rod twirling and fish incineration that folk seem to still enjoy; and in conditions that were best described as, hmm ... chilly. So after casting came the cookery bit. Having duly 'prepped' and smoked my fish - a trout that fell under the “Here's one I caught earlier” tag - I faced the enviable but slightly unnerving prospect of having to catch another to cook next day.

Now the problem is, if you ask a row of ten local fly fishers to suggest a good water, you will probably get ten different answers. I would have spent my entire Sunday evening hopping from one beck to another, and one valley or dale to another. Not good. The water selection process was made a little easier via a hearty invitation from Peter to fish with him on the Nidd. I love the Nidd.

Low water, I was warned, would be a problem – I felt that the waspish wind and threat of showers was a far greater threat to joyous dry fly fishing ... but we are back to those stolen moments. Did I care? Not really.

OK, on arrival the brisk northerly tinged wind was puckering the surface into a trellis of ripple, the flies - such as they were - were being harvested by the sword-winged swifts, swallows and martens and the river looked a little quiet; then, bit by bit, ring by ring, the odd rise spilled out across the surface – from under trees and in foam flecked runs – some gentle and near unseen, other obvious and magnetic; certainly enough to put an 18 parachute calf tail dun on to 7x tippet. And the lovely thing about meagre hatches and spasmodic rising trout is that those fish tend to be eager. Catchable.

Before the cold wind snapped a little too much into the fingers, I had landed a brace of splendid grayling, missed others and netted half a dozen trout. All wild. All returned.

So what did I cook the next day for the assembled at the demonstration? Well I would be derelict in my duty to the PG’s if I didn’t come to a show prepared for all eventualities. There just happened to be a 'stockie' rainbow lurking under a bed of ice in the cool box. Well, how could I possibly take one of nature's own and Yorkshire’s finest?