Fish Tales with Chris Yates on BBC Radio 4

We anglers are in for a treat commencing Easter Monday 9th April through to Thursday 12 April 3-45 to 4-00pm BBC Radio 4 wades into the watery worlds of four of Britain's most common coarse fish: the carp, the pike, the trout and the perch.

Armed only with creel, rod and a tub of coriander-flavoured maggots, writer, naturalist and master angler Chris Yates lures listeners into the worlds of these very different species to reveal their whims, idiosyncrasies and individual characters. Joined by a special guest in each programme, Chris creates four evocative piscatorial portraits whilst fishing for these denizens of the deep.

Today, Chris takes comedian and passionate fisherman Paul Whitehouse to a secret lake somewhere in the south of England to see if they can catch a carp. The Fast Show character Rowley Birkin also makes a brief appearance!

Tuesday's programme focuses on the pike and comes from the banks of a quiet river in Dorset. Here, Britain's top rod-maker, Edward Barder, explains why Esox Lucius doesn't really deserve its reputation as "the tyrant of the watery plain".

On Wednesday, champion trout angler Ronnie Butler, an expert with the fly, reveals how the appearance of the brown trout varies hugely from water to water.

In the final programme on Thursday, writer Tom Fort accompanies Chris to the River Thames in search of the perch – a fiery and much-respected fish, of whose appearance a Victorian ichthyologist once declared "no lady's dress is finer than the dress of the perch".