Fifty seven years ago, the author Ernest Hemingway inaugurated a big game fishing competition in Cuba. Held almost annually and despite tensions between the US and Cuba, the four-day event is still proving popular.

Like all the best fishing stories, mine began in a bar.

One evening in Havana I was introduced to a man called Stewart, an affable commercial manager in a London building firm.

It turned out he was part of the English team in this year's Hemingway fishing tournament. In fact he was the only Englishman on his boat and he was taking on recruits.

Two days later, we were a mile off the Havana coast, hoping to strike lucky in what I was told was the oldest big game fishing competition in the world.

The Torneo Hemingway is of those remnants of pre-revolution Cuba which just will not die. Maybe that is not entirely unconnected to the fact that Fidel Castro himself is a previous winner.

There is a photograph of Ernest Hemingway handing him the trophy in 1960. It was the only time the two men ever met...