John Hedge was born in England in the first decade of the twentieth century. His father was a keen angler; Hedge’s first clear memory was of the family billiards room where his father “kept his rods in a glass case and his tackle in a drawer below it.” Heady stuff for a lad, and at an early age he began fishing, first with bait for carp and roach and bream, then trolling with a spoon flash before graduating to fly fishing with the long rod.
Mastering the art required long hours of practice, under his father’s tutelage at first, and by the time he arrived in Australia in 1934 he had as he puts it, “acquired skill,” and was looking forward to fishing new streams in a new land.
Forthright, appreciative (he donated the royalties and copyright of his last book to the Monaro Acclimatisation Society) and often opinionated, John Hedge is remembered by anglers through his two books. The first, Trout Fishing in New South Wales, was published in 1962 in two forms—a standard edition of 1000 copies and a special edition of 500 signed and numbered copies. Trout Fishing in New South Wales is an interesting mixture of story telling and technical manual. Both editions—an expanded and corrected second edition appeared in 1963—include a little philosophy with instructions on wet and dry fly fishing, advice about equipment, and a detailed guide to the rivers and lakes (he appears to have belonged to the tell-all school—if you tell everyone about every fishing spot, there are enough spots for everyone).
His second, A Season on Monaro, is his account of “the story of a dream fulfilled”, of spending a season from spring’s beginnings to autumn’s end on the lakes and streams of the Monaro. He presents himself as a man who has led a humdrum life. “I will not dwell,” he writes, “on the wasted years when I caught, unfailingly, the 8:20 a.m. from a certain station on the North Shore, which, not always unfailingly, landed me at Wynyard at 8:45.” Like Hedge’s first, A Season on Monaro is a book of many threads and again, a blend of story and technical manual. He writes in his conclusion: “It has been a wonderful season. Many fish were landed, an even greater number were missed, but it will forever remain a season of sunlight, of good fellowship over the burning embers of the fire, of many stories told, some of doubtful veracity but evocative of laughter.”
Hedge also wrote occasionally for newspapers and magazines. An early article, ‘Inquiry needed to check trout fishing decline,’ was published in the Hobart Mercury on 10 December 1945 and outlined his concerns about the quality of Tasmanian angling. Other articles included ‘The things that happen out fishing,’ published in the Anglers’ Digest in March 1969.
John Hedge fished the trout waters of New South Wales for many years. He shared his piscatorial pursuits with more than a few angling luminaries and while it is sometimes difficult to know where fact ends and fisherman’s licence takes over (“Life should not be all fact,” he wrote in A Season on Monaro, “—there must be fantasy as a leavening”) the occasional contradiction should be taken in the spirit of his writing.
