Very few anglers will not have heard of Mick Brown. He was born in Birmingham in 1946 and is now living in South Lincolnshire where he is affectionately known as Sir Michael or The Duke of Market Deeping. These are nicknames given to him by his fishing buddy and TV co-presenter Matt Hayes for the very reason that he is quite the opposite of royalty!His contribution to angling has been vast. For over 50 years he has entertained us with hundreds of magazine articles and dozens of television programs, written numerous books, and appeared in many video and DVD productions. Such was Mick’s interest in angling that he became self employed as a professional angler in 1993, and for the following thirty years worked as a predator fishing consultant for many of the leading tackle manufacturers such as Fox International, Shimano and Rapala.These are roles that are difficult to step into as they require an enormous amount of knowledge and experience which cannot be gained quickly and easily. As though fate had prepared Mick for a career that most anglers can only dream off, he held the perfect qualifications which had been gained in the previous twenty years. Those formative years had moulded Mick perfectly for the lifestyle he had dreamt of - a lifestyle where he was paid to do the very things he loved to do!This book is about those formative years, but it is much more than that because it was written way back in 1992, and the words that you will read come from a much younger Mick and reflect those times when predator fishing was approached in a much more innocent way, and anglers like Mick were making it up as they went along. It describes in detail just how pike and predator fishing was starting to develop through that era, and which eventually led to the amazing opportunities possible today now that our knowledge has expanded and technology has given us the advantages of better equipment and information sharing that was not available back then.Mick feels that he is still the happy go lucky person now as he was then but admits that he has become more responsible and less intensive about his fishing. You may not agree with some of the things that you will read, but Mick has not changed anything to bring the book into line with modern popular thinking or practice. He accepts that this is about a bygone era that we have moved on from, but has no regrets in telling it the way it was.The production of this book came about quite unexpectedly. The original manuscript had been gathering dust since those days and almost forgotten about. It was, in fact, the first book manuscript that Mick offered to a publisher. He had poured his heart and soul into writing it, but when a publisher asked him to alter it to make it a more commercial proposition, Mick refused. Instead, he wrote them a new book – The Practice and the Passion (Crowood Press). This went on to become a huge success and is even in print to this very day.The old manuscript was forgotten about, and Mick went on to write several more best selling books; notably Professional Pike angler which he published himself in 2010. In a recent clear out of his study, Mick unearthed the typed manuscript and decide to read it, maybe for the last time before it was destined for the dustbin after he was gone. In doing so, he concluded that this was probably the best piece of work he had ever done. Written in a largely descriptive style, it may not have fitted the brief for the following years when books had to be either technical or sensationalised and lavishly endowed with colour photographs of big fish. This is a book for anglers who like to read about experiences, rather than look at the pictures. Mick felt that it was now the time to let the younger predator anglers of today realise just where it all started, and for anglers of his own generation to bask in the memories of those times. If it does either of these things for you, he will have succeeded.