Philip Hyde wrote to us with the following sad news, and a personal tribute which we echo.
One of BASS founder members and early committee member N. J. (Digger) Derrington, died at his home in Yeppoon, near Rockhampton, Northern Queensland, Australia, in the last week of April.
During the war with the Japanese, he was imprisoned in Changi. He came to England in the late ‘fifties, and started his sea angling at Walton-on-Naze under the guidance of the late John Metcalfe (later the builder of the Metalite series of fishing rods).
Along with Gillespie and the Clacton dinghy anglers, he was a pioneer of casting away from the boat, now known as Uptiding or Boatcasting.
He and his wife Pam lived at Ilford, Essex and travelled widely with a small caravan and a small dog called Frankie, fishing from the old man of Hoy down to Sennen cove.
On retirement from his job with B.T., he moved to one of his favourite places in the U.K., Drummore, on the west side of Luce Bay, the home of Scotland’s record bass. But the call of his homeland was stronger, and a few years ago he moved 12,000 miles, back to Oz.
He was something of a technophobe, and today’s orientated methods would have received some scathing comments from him. His legacy for sea anglers is that he was the originator, via the old Angling magazine, of the ‘Teach-in’ and ‘Fish-in’ that we still organise among ourselves today.
Thanks, Digger.