A GROUP of friends who met in Ilkley in the 1970s have written a book called The Ilkley Connection: Forty Years of Angling Friendships, edited by Dave Tipping. David Martin, the Secretary of Ilkley Angling Association said: “I am one of those friends who met, initially, at Ilkley Grammar School. Any profits from the sale of this book will go to the Angling Trust, the UK’s main angling organisation which campaigns for clean rivers and lakes.” The book details how in the 1970s a group of impoverished, fishing-mad students dreamt of exploring waters beyond their home patch. Travelling in rusty cars or rented vans and sleeping in flimsy, leaking tents, they set out to catch the legendary pike of Loch Lomond and the much-maligned zander, an alien predator that was rampant in the fenlands of Eastern England. The friendships and the fishing trips have endured for more than 40 years, but nowadays the rusty cars are long gone and the tents have been replaced by self-catering lod