Whenever I remember a dream it will almost always feature fish. Not brightly coloured, tropical fish but huge muddy-green specimens viewed from above in a river or lake. I’m excited to see them but frustrated because I don’t have a fishing rod with me.

My wife calls fishing my “imaginary hobby”. I understand what she means. I have all the tackle and the know-how, I’ve kept my rod licence current for years, but I never actually go.

How can I? I have two young children. Fishing is not something you can do when you have a couple of spare hours. It takes a whole day, otherwise it’s pointless.

But my memories of fishing as a kid are some of my most precious. To this day I can’t pass a river without stopping to gaze into the water to assess its angling potential.

I can spot a fish in a river where others see nothing. “There! Right there! A massive chub!”

The Darenth River in Kent is where every spare moment of my childhood was spent, living out a Huckleberry Finn fantasy.

It was there I developed a passion for our native wildlife. I could scoop crayfish from under the rocks with my hands and, if I sat still enough for long enough, I could watch kingfishers, weasels and water voles going about their business.

But to get close to the fish, those mysterious, alien creatures, I had to resort to a rod and line. You will never see a perch close up unless you catch it. The tiger stripes, the red and razor-sharp fins.

How will you ever see a tench unless you catch one? Marvel for a few moments at its velvet-green skin and then let it back into its mysterious aquatic world.

On holidays in Zimbabwe I spent days sitting on the banks of the dam on my uncle’s tobacco farm.

Sometimes I’d catch something; more often I wouldn’t. But I’d watch huge fish-eagles snatching their prey from the water, and pythons basking on the rocks. Once I did catch a 3ft catfish and that was enough to last me for years.

I suppose what I’m saying is that for me fishing was always an opportunity to sit quietly and watch the natural world. If you catch a fish, great — if not, doesn’t matter.

My son Jude is desperate for me to take him fishing and I can’t wait either. What a great father-and-son thing to do (I won’t be taking him to a football match or “playing catch in the yard”).

But he’s 6, he wouldn’t last ten minutes and, unless I rigged it so that he landed a fish within that time, he might never get hooked.

So I’ll wait a couple of years and, with luck, he too will spend his days not going fishing and his nights dreaming of fish.