There had been a slowly-maturing preparation for this unusual career. Born in Catford, south London, Bernard's first fishing was in the mysterious dykes of Romney Marsh at the age of six. The other great loves of his life - painting and drawing - were encouraged by his training at Croydon School of Art in the 1920s. This was followed by work in commercial studios, and on the staff of the Daily Express. In 1939, he was drawn into a variety of war-work commissions, including writing and illustrating a book on battle tanks. He returned to the Express in 1945, but was then poached by the Daily Mirror.
Soon afterwards, the most celebrated cartoon character in angling history made his public debut. Today, the Crabtree strip has a certain period charm; here is a father seeking refuge from postwar austerity on the river bank, and playing instructor and sage to his son Peter. Excellent drawings made all points clear, and Peter, eager and respectful in collar-and-tie and short trousers, is taken through a variety of angling situations.
The series had such a runaway success that the Mirror persuaded Bernard to turn it into a book. Thus, in 1949, with the addition of commentary and coloured illustrations, Mr Crabtree Goes Fishing appeared - and at once began to sell in staggering numbers. A happy combination of the practical and the philosophical had created a work of irresistible charm. Eventually, more than 2m copies were sold, surpassing all angling titles since Izaak Walton. An edition was produced last year, and rapidly sold out.
In 1953, Bernard was lured away from the Mirror by the broadcaster Howard Marshall. Marshall was ambitious to found a national angling paper in tabloid form, and had fixed on Bernard as his editorial director. Again, a real need had been identified; the circulation of Angling Times climbed from 30,000 in the first year to 170,000 in 1962. But Bernard was restless and slightly bored by its success, and was anxious to move on to some new creative challenge. In 1963, he got backing from Purnell for the launch of a new journal called Creel.
Carrying articles from many leading angling writers of the day, it was distinguished by good design and the quality of the colour pictures reproduced by the new web offset process. But the issue of this venture was much less happy: Purnell became impatient with the high production costs and insisted on a drastic scaling-down of the paper, causing Bernard to leave in disgust.
In the years that followed, Bernard was busily involved with appearances on radio and television, and with writing, punctuated by some larger-than-life experiences in the wider world.
Already, in 1959, he had set up a one-man expedition to Madeira, which resulted in the landing of a 1700lb shark. In 1966, during a trip for the Zambian government to explore tourism possibilities, he trekked to the source of the Zambezi, and added to his growing fist of book titles with Coming Down The Zambezi. In 1967, he joined a group of men in the Azores still whaling in small, open boats, in the same primitive and dangerous way described in Moby Dick. From this he derived another book, Balela! (1967), a strangely moving account of the risky lives of desperately poor men lacking the security of the factory ship, and of the pitiful deaths of the great whales.
Bernard was one of those people who refused to notice the onset of old age. He was well over 80 when he fished for tiger fish on Lake Kariba, and for Nile perch in Uganda, and was still writing, painting and broadcasting in the 1990s. Failing sight slowed him a little, but fishing expeditions were still possible - with friends in attendance to stop him from walking into the water.
His philosophy was a little out of step with the signs and developments of the modern angling scene, which he observed with some disquiet. For him, fishing was not just an absorbing and delightful sport, but also an escape from the cares of modern life and a calm to the soul. He was not much in sympathy with the commercialisation, competitiveness and obsession with technical gadgetry that have become such a part of fishing today.
He was also unusual in that he loved all forms of fishing - something he shared with the great angling writers of the past, such as Francis Francis, RB Marston and William Senior - and was not tied to one area of the pursuit.
In 1995, he was pleased at the award of an MBE, regarding it as a sign of recognition for anglers in general. He leaves his wife Eileen, and two sons.
Bernard Venables, angler, artist and writer, born February 14 1907; died April 21 2001
