Tickling ban will cut out the fun

In Scotland, the traditional pastime known as guddling is still passed down from father to son. Countless generations of young men have, and still do, roll up their sleeves before slipping their fingers under a trout's belly.

Despite being technically illegal in Scotland under a little known clause of the Salmon and Freshwater Fisheries Protection (Scotland) Act, a blind eye is usually turned as youngsters get to grips with nature.

The Environment Agency's decision, on the other hand, is viewed by most anglers as being heavy handed.

A defter touch, like the gentle art itself, should have been used in drawing up the proposals.

Now an increased legal threat to guddling in Scotland may soon become a reality if our own do-gooders follow the Environment Agency's lead.

Under the planned by-laws in England and Wales it will be an offence to catch any fish in ''rivers, streams, drains and canals'' other than with a rod and line except with written permission.

The agency's move is intended to halt mass poaching, and stripping waters of large numbers of fish. The by-laws will also ban the use of nets, spears or gaffs.

Quite rightly so, but the daft legislators fail to grasp the simple enjoyment derived from trout tickling, which is so often a prospective young angler's first brush with fish.

No self-respecting poacher would attempt to catch his or her quarry by tickling or guddling because it would be self-defeating to do so. Trout tickling is almost certainly the most inefficient way to bag a fish.

Even the most enthusiastic guddler would struggle to notch up half a dozen fish in a day.

Sticks of dynamite, hand-grenades, nets and cyanide would be far more profitable - although of course utterly unethical.

Michael Stag, of the London Anglers' Association, learned to tickle trout when he was just 12 years old.

''It is something that is passed on from one generation of anglers to the next. It does take plenty of patience.

''But now it seems that the Environment Agency wants to outlaw this simple pleasure,'' he says. ''Tickling does little to harm the trout population.''

The art itself is relatively straightforward; lie flat just above a hole beneath a bank, dip your hand into the water and under the bank, feel gently for a trout and slowly - very slowly - stroke or ''tickle'' its belly.

Be patient. After a time, you can curl your fingers under it then quickly grab hold of it by the gills or tail and flick it on to the riverbank.

Yet, one of the main disincentives facing guddling in Scotland nowadays is a lack of available water with a reasonable number and size of trout to pluck out.

''When I was young,'' says Tayside angler Bill Easton, ''it was so easy to guddle. If the conditions were right and there was an undercut banking then you could slip your hands under the bank. It became difficult when you had to wade into a burn or river because then you had to go low towards the water, and usually ended up getting wet.

''In the main we used to go to the burns where there was always a good head of half-pound wild trout. Now most of these burns are stocked privately, and so taking fish from them is illegal. Trout guddling has become a dying art.

''On the other hand guddling for loach is still relatively easy to do.''

But if, like many, you don't find tickling funny then there are other, equally novel, methods of catching fish, like singing for swordbearers in the straits of Sicily, live frog fishing for bass in America, eel-switching in Ireland or using a tame badger in downtown Hereford.

How practical - and legal - these methods of ''fishing'' are is debatable.

We Scots pride ourselves that our legal system is separate from England's.

If this crass legislation which will prevent a wee boy from guddling is typical of the sort of thing our southern cousins impose upon themselves then let us hope the two systems always remain apart.