Michael Devenish wasted much of the first fifty years of his angling life being a successful businessman and mortgage payer. From childhood messing in streams and ponds to fly fishing for trout, his piscatorial horizons gradually expanded to include coarse and sea fishing throughout the UK along with regular expeditions to the remote jungle rivers of the Amazon basin in search of exotic and predatory species. He has also fished extensively in India, Africa and Central America. At home in the south-west of England he keeps koi carp in his garden pond and stocks and runs a small trout lake with friends.