CLIVE GAMMON
29th March 1929 - 10th June 2012
Clive Gammon was born in Wales in 1929. He started fishing with his grandfather at six years of age and with a greenheart rod, landed his first fish, a whiting, on Swansea’s West Pier. During his school days, Clive and his school friends fished the trout streams and bass beaches of the Gower Peninsula. He later extended his range to the Towy in Carmarthenshire, where he went fishing for sea trout. It was here that he caught his first salmon, which he took to the back door of a Llandeilo hotel and received £2 in return. He also enjoyed detours to fish for pike and canal perch.
Clive’s first significant piece of fishing writing was 40,000 words on ‘The Literature of Angling, 1496 to 1750’, for an MA thesis. After university, Clive taught in Manchester for two years and then went on to teach English at Pembroke Grammar School. He worked as an angling columnist for The Daily Express, The Angling Times, Creel magazine and as a television critic of The Spectator, before being hired by the American Sports Illustrated Magazine. In the mid-Sixties he moved to Manhattan and travelled the world covering mainstream sport, including five football World Cups and some of the big Ali fights.
Three or four times a year, his editor would ask him to write a fishing piece. When Clive was asked where he wanted to go, he once replied 'Outer Mongolia' and an hour later he found himself in the Travel Department (The Sports Illustrated travel agency) filling out a visa application! In the near-quarter century that Clive worked for Sports Illustrated, he fished his way from 200 miles short of the North Pole to the Falklands. His book Castaway covers many of his overseas expeditions and is one of angling's most enjoyable travel books.
Clive spent his retirement living in Wales, chasing the bass of its beaches and the sewin of its delectable Towy. During this time he became a regular contributor to Waterlog. He founded the Bass Anglers' Sportfishing Society in 1973.
Clive died on 10th June 2012.
Titles by Clive Gammon include:
Castaway 2005 (Medlar Press)
Angling Guide to Wales 1976
Sea Fishing 1969
Tope 1975
Sea Trout 1974
I Know a Good Place 1989
Hook, Line & Spinner
29th March 1929 - 10th June 2012
Clive Gammon was born in Wales in 1929. He started fishing with his grandfather at six years of age and with a greenheart rod, landed his first fish, a whiting, on Swansea’s West Pier. During his school days, Clive and his school friends fished the trout streams and bass beaches of the Gower Peninsula. He later extended his range to the Towy in Carmarthenshire, where he went fishing for sea trout. It was here that he caught his first salmon, which he took to the back door of a Llandeilo hotel and received £2 in return. He also enjoyed detours to fish for pike and canal perch.
Clive’s first significant piece of fishing writing was 40,000 words on ‘The Literature of Angling, 1496 to 1750’, for an MA thesis. After university, Clive taught in Manchester for two years and then went on to teach English at Pembroke Grammar School. He worked as an angling columnist for The Daily Express, The Angling Times, Creel magazine and as a television critic of The Spectator, before being hired by the American Sports Illustrated Magazine. In the mid-Sixties he moved to Manhattan and travelled the world covering mainstream sport, including five football World Cups and some of the big Ali fights.
Three or four times a year, his editor would ask him to write a fishing piece. When Clive was asked where he wanted to go, he once replied 'Outer Mongolia' and an hour later he found himself in the Travel Department (The Sports Illustrated travel agency) filling out a visa application! In the near-quarter century that Clive worked for Sports Illustrated, he fished his way from 200 miles short of the North Pole to the Falklands. His book Castaway covers many of his overseas expeditions and is one of angling's most enjoyable travel books.
Clive spent his retirement living in Wales, chasing the bass of its beaches and the sewin of its delectable Towy. During this time he became a regular contributor to Waterlog. He founded the Bass Anglers' Sportfishing Society in 1973.
Clive died on 10th June 2012.
Titles by Clive Gammon include:
Castaway 2005 (Medlar Press)
Angling Guide to Wales 1976
Sea Fishing 1969
Tope 1975
Sea Trout 1974
I Know a Good Place 1989
Hook, Line & Spinner