Column by historian Roger Bingham of Ackenthwaite:

JUST as 'country craft' can mean both skill and cunning, 'poached salmon' has two meanings - culinary and criminal - for rural folk.

In Sunset to Sunrise, Adrian Bell described salmon poaching along the upper reaches of the River Lune in the 1940s. For a few nights, 'there had been eerie midnight vigils sitting on guard for beck watchers [the water variety of the gamekeeper] while others waded the river with a dark lantern looking for salmon.

'These native dwellers by the becks felt they had as much right to the produce of the water as of the land, an attitude which was resented by anglers who were amazed at the unbelievable ease with which a trout allows itself to be caught by boy with bare hands.

'I sympathise with anglers and their essentially British habit of making rules for fair play. But the anglers discount the element of sport which the combined darkness and illegality gives the poacher. But by day it is an exercise in self-control.

'One lad could remain stone-still for two hours before he dared to strike. The reward for his patience was , I can tell you, delicious.'