Diary of a Beckwatcher is a day to day story of Water Bailiff Jack Carter describing events that actually took place during a career spanning more than thirty years conserving salmon and sea trout stocks in Cumbria's Lakeland Rivers. The story begins in 1976 when as a rookie Bailiff Jack encounters his first offender. The seven man Bailiff team is headed by the highly respected Joe Marwood who is also Jacks father in law. All the team members have their own patch of river to patrol and the book outlines Jacks relationship with each one of them and of course all the many and varied poachers and illegal operators encountered. Salmon poaching was rife in south Lakeland in the seventies and eighties, but by the late nineties due to many years of successful prosecutions together with changes in demand for wild salmon finding a poaching incident became a rarity. Less unemployment and cheap farmed fish have made the risk very unattractive to most would be poachers. There are those die hards of course who never change.