A noble club with a tangled history

It is not the oldest fishing club, as many believe. To most people’s great surprise, that honour goes to an American fly-fishing society, the Schuylkill (pronounced ‘skookul’) Fishing Company of Pennsylvania. The club, set up largely by a group of primarily Welsh immigrants in 1732, still flourishes, though its emphasis today is said to be more on fine dining than fishing.

But there is no such compromise for the Houghton Fishing Club, which owns the choicest fishing on the River Test, where the water is said to be as clear as gin and twice as expensive. The world’s most famous angling society, it holds around 14 miles of the chalkstream around Stockbridge and celebrates its 200th anniversary this year. Its focus, however, is still entirely on tempting Test trout. And while the Schuylkill claims to be a highly exclusive club, boasting 10 Philadelphia mayors among its previous members, almost half of the 27 casting a line today on the Houghton waters are lords or knights. Among the great and the good who have