As a self-employed Management Consultant (blue pin-stripe suit, yellow tie) I always thought I was pretty nifty at feeling around inside corporate pockets to relieve them of money in exchange for advising them of the bleeding obvious.  But an experience I had at Pickering Trout Farm and Fishery some years ago showed me to be no more than a naif in this regard.

The trout lakes sit at the side of the North Yorkshire Moors Steam Railway and purport to provide would-be anglers with a guaranteed successful day’s fishing.  And they don’t disappoint.

But let me explain through a day’s chronology.

You turn up with the family in tow, wife and two kids and pay the admission fee in return for 4 hours of fun angling. That’s your fist 50 quid gone. Ker-ching.

You’ll need tackle, of course – rod, reel, line, floats, weights, hooks, all available to hire.  For four.  Ker-ching.

You’ll need bait. Only their own bait may be used.  Available for a small price at the shop.  Ker-ching.

Also in the shop you buy for the kids pic-n-mix sweets even more expensive than at your Multiplex cinema. Ker-ching.  Throw in two cappuccinos and you’re good to go.  Ker-ching.

Now here’s the killer.  The trout are trained to be suicidal.  You can’t help but catch them.  Inside 10 minutes you’ve each caught half a dozen and your keepnet is boiling.  “Great sport” you think until you realise you’re not permitted to return any fish to the water (“to prevent disease”) but must purchase all fish caught at £8.50 a kilo.  KER-CHING!

So you instruct everyone to stop fishing which starts the kids wailing.  But there is a get-out.  You can placate them by buying small bags of fish food for them to throw in and watch the feeding frenzy.  Ker-ching.

So think about that.  The running costs of a fishing lake are nearly nil.  Apart from feeding them a little from time to time.  And you even get your customer to pay for that.

I learned a lot that day.