Fishing Lines | Keith Elliott

Why I sleep in a bath full of water...

You'll have no trouble finding me, if the whim suddenly takes you to hire a light aircraft and fly to Sweden today. ("Why don't we pop over to the Arctic Circle rather than going to the pub for lunch?")

It's not exactly overpopulated here on the Lapland border. You're more likely to spot a snowy owl or an arctic fox than another human. What's more, while everyone else is enjoying the Swedish summer, I'm dressed as if about to carry out remedial work on an unstable nuclear reactor. The reason? My fear of animals.

Not just any animals. If a Swedish bear wants my freshly caught salmon, he can have it. But I wouldn't panic. Tigers in India, jaguars in Ecuador, monitor lizards in Malaysia: I found them a bit scary, but not terrifying.

Once upon a time, before I discovered how little they earned, I wanted to be a zoo-keeper. So most animals fascinate rather than frighten me, even the classic horrors such as snakes, sharks and tarantulas.

But there is one group I really hate. Not dislike. Hate. And when I see a fine mesh nailed across windows, I know that it's a place where only heroes eat barbecues by the campfire – because of the mosquitoes.

I'm one of those unfortunates whose yummy blood draws biting insects from miles around. At home, if a mosquito or midge sneaks into our bedroom at night (not easy, as the room has more anti-bug devices than Fort Knox has security cameras) it will feast on me until its plunger goes blunt. My wife will be untouched. In the morning, I'll look like an ad for chickenpox. My eyes will be red, because I cannot sleep when that high-pitched drill shrieks.

When it stops, I'm convinced it's sucking my blood. My response is hopelessly irrational, I know. I don't even suffer particularly adverse reactions from the bites. But ask me to decide between a room full of black widows and another with a single mosquito, and it's no choice.

I tried joss sticks once. Aside from the pretend sitar music from my mocking mates, the smell gave me a dreadful headache. In Spain once, driven totally demented, I filled a bath and slept with just my head above water. (For some reason, the local mozzies didn't bite your face.) I thought: "Right, you buggers – you'll need an aqualung to get me now."

The whole thing started, I guess, when I went to the jungles of Ecuador to fish for arapaima. My friend Danny failed to put his mosquito net up properly and overnight collected 169 bites on one leg alone. I know, because I helped to count them (fishing was a bit slow at the time).

I had been reading horror stories in Redmond O'Hanlon's In Trouble Again about what the local bugs could do to you. Malaria was the least of them. From that moment, my travelling kit changed. Now I carry sprays of 100 per cent Deet, the stuff that rots your clothes after about 10 minutes. I've got mosquito coils, swats, lights, buzzers. I wear special socks so they can't sneak in at ground level. I carry two face nets (in case I lose one), and even light gloves for evening fishing.

For an angler, standing in or beside water at dusk and beyond goes with the job. So having a phobia of gnats, midges, blackflies and mosquitoes is a bit like being allergic to fish.

Keith Elliott