Arthur Oglesby

Arthur Victor Oglesby (21^st December 1923-2^nd December 2000) was a British writer, photographer, film-maker, broadcaster and fisherman and is best known for his books on salmon fishing.

Early years

Arthur Oglesby was born in Scarborough in December 1923, before the family moved to York when he was 2 years old. In his autobiography Reeling In, he described his Yorkshire childhood as ‘semi-Victorian’. As a boy he enjoyed a rural life, where he was first introduced to fishing. Leaving school at 16 years, he became an apprentice chemist for the family manufacturing pharmaceuticals business, Harvey Scruton, York (his grandfather, a chemist, had invented the famous Nurse Harvey’s Gripe Water, as a remedy for colic in infants).

At the age of 18 years, Arthur Oglesby joined the Black Watch regiment, joining the war in Northern France, he was wounded in Normandy in the thigh and chest, just a few weeks after surviving the D-Day landings in June 1944. He was latterly stationed in Gibraltar from 1945-7 and left the Army as a Captain, returning to Yorkshire to help run the family business.

When he was not working, he spent as much time as he could on his hobbies of fishing, shooting and photography. In 1950 he began to combine these hobbies by taking photos of angling subjects. His first commission was for ICI where he sold some transparencies for their calendar. He then began to submit articles for magazines such as The Field, Creel and Angling, Shooting Times, Amateur Photographer and the American Field & Stream as European editor.

For three years he became the editor of Anglers Annual during the mid-Sixties and for two decades was weekly contributor to Shooting Times, and wrote regularly for Trout & Salmon. His photographic archive held more than 30,000 images.

Pilot’s licence in 1957.

He first visited the River Spey in 1957 with his mentor Eric Horsfall Turner and met up with Captain T L ‘Tommy’ Edwards, who was running some of the first-ever fishing courses and took him on as an assistant instructor. On Edwards’ death in 1968, he took over the courses on Speyside teaching parties of fishermen for over 30 years.

From 1968 he took a back seat in the running of the family business, moved to live in Harrogate and concentrate on making a career from angling.

1969 he set up the Association of Professional Game Angling Instructors and was its chairman for many years.

He was a prolific writer, with a total of nine books to his own pen, or co-authored. His first was in 1971 titled Salmon and his most famous book was Fly Fishing for Salmon & Sea Trout, written in 1983.

He was most renowned for catching two huge Atlantic salmon on the Bolstrad beat of the Vosso river in Norway including one in 1973, his largest ever fish weighing 49 1/2lb. He caught some of the largest catches of his generation, and over the course of his career, he landed over 2,500 Atlantic salmon.

1986 wrote Fly Fishing for Salmon & Sea Trout

He ran the casting demonstrations at the annual CLA Game Fair and in 1999 he was awarded their Lifetime Achievement Award.

For many years, he led fishing parties to Iceland, Alaska, Norway and Russia, usually in the company of his second wife Grace, herself an accomplished fisherwoman. And he continued to run the fishing school at Grantown-on-Spey in Scotland during the spring weeks and late summer each year, teaching hundreds of people to perfect the art of salmon fishing.

In December 2000, at the age of 76, Arthur Oglesby passed away suddenly, from an undiagnosed infection, after heart surgery.

Family

Arthur was married twice, firstly to Mary in 1947 (divorced 1968) and secondly to Grace in 1969. He was survived by his second wife Grace, two boys from his first marriage, and two boys from his second marriage.

Legacy

In 2001 the CLA Game Fair commissioned Ian Greensitt to produce a bronze salmon trophy for the Arthur Oglesby Award. This was awarded annually to someone who has made a lifetime contribution to the sport of fishing and who has made a particular impact in the last year. Previous winners have included Sandy Leventon, Charles Jardine, Hugh Miles, Eoin Fairgrieve, Martin Salter MP and Naidre Werner.

The Oglesby Suite at Goldsborough Hall, owned by his youngest son Mark, has been named in Arthur Oglesby’s honour. It was opened in 2012 by friend and fellow fishing writer David Profumo. Wooden fish replicas trophies of Arthur Oglesby’s huge catches on the Norwegian Vosso (46 1/2lb and 49 1/2lb) hang in the Oglesby Suite and in the reception of Goldsborough Hall.

Films

Game Fishing and Fly Casting by Hugh Falkus and Arthur Oglesby, 1983

Flyfishing Volumes I (An introduction to fly fishing), Volume II (Trout, Grayling and Salmon) and Volume III (Stillwater Flyfishing) by Arthur Oglesby

Books

• Salmon by Arthur Oglesby, published by Macdonald, 1971, ISBN 10: 0356080005 ISBN 13: 9780356080000

• Fly Fishing for Salmon & Sea Trout by Arthur Oglesby, published by The Crowood Press Ltd, 1986, ISBN 10: 1861260725 ISBN 13: 9781861260727

• The Complete Book of Fishing by Arthur Oglesby, John Wilson, Trevor Housby, Mike Millman, Peter Gathercole, published by Octopus Books Ltd, 1987, ISBN 10: 0706430271 ISBN 13: 9780706430271

• A Guide to Salmon Flies by John Buckland and Arthur Oglesby published by The Crowood Press, 1990, ISBN:10 9781852232467

• Reeling In by Arthur Oglesby, published by The Crowood Press, 1988, ISBN:10 1852231130

• The Complete book of Flyfishing by Arthur Oglesby, Bengt Oste, Lefty Kreh and Steen Ulnitz, published by Stoeger Publishing Company, 1997, ISBN 0883172089, 9780883172087