I'm Ben Field. Welcome to Art of Fishing.

Before I ever opened the shop, I was a match angler — coarse fishing — and a fairly competitive one. Big competitions around the country, a stack of local leagues. What pulled me in was never really the catching, it was the puzzle: the rig, the hook size, the way a float sat, the line choice, the way you'd adjust something tiny to fish a peg properly. I've never wanted my fishing to be easy. The challenge of working out a better way to do something is the bit I enjoy.

In the six months before I opened, I spent every spare penny on lures from Japan — purely so I could fish them, study them, and figure out what they actually did in the water. That's where the whole project started: not from a business plan, but from genuine, slightly obsessive curiosity. Fifteen years on, that bit hasn't changed. I still get more done by handling rods, lines and lures than I ever did from reading about them.

My job, as I see it, is to look after your relationship with fishing — not the next transaction. That's not a marketing line; it's how the shop actually runs. Rods don't make it onto our shelf unless I'd genuinely fish them. If a cheaper rod is the right one for you, I'll point you at the cheaper rod. If the one you came in for isn't going to suit the fishing you've described, I'll say so — politely, and with a better suggestion ready.

It matters to me that the rod is right. People save up for these things, and getting the wrong one is a quiet way to put someone off fishing for years. I'd rather sell you nothing today and have you back in a season's time than rush you into a setup that isn't yours.

I run the shop the way I'd want one run for me. That's the whole thing — and it's why I'm still here, fifteen years in.