Great Pike Stories

GREAT PIKE STORIES by Fred Buller
Published by the Medlar Press
168 pages, illustrated by small black and white sketches of pike
Price: Cloth £ 39.50, Leather £ 110.00

This is classic Medlar Press and classic Buller, both masters of fine production. It is an excellent read. I reckon that it would be read at its best on a dark and wintry and cold afternoon, with the reader indoors by a roaring fire, and the weather outside where it should be. Fred has gathered together a great range of stories, all more or less unbelievable – some more so than others perhaps but all thoroughly steeped in the folklore and legend of pike fishing.

There’s the Lillishall Limeworks pike of 170 lbs. Enough said on that one! Then the voracious pike of 54 lbs; the weight is okay, but the stomach contents – ‘four fully grown duck’ – well, believe it if you like!

Duck in a pike’s tum occur in other stories in the book too. The story about Jardine is seriously good reading, even the questioning of his veracity (the criticism seems a little on the thin side to me, given the way people’s memories work. Or don’t.) Jardine picked up on the link between very rough, but warm, weather and the feeding of big pike. The best told story in the book is, for me, the Demon Pike of Sparshott tale – I’ll not tell you anything further.

There is also an account of Clifford Warwick’s capture of the English Record Pike from the Hampshire Avon. I have no real problem with it, a good story and probably all fine, but there’s a little niggle in it. When he describes the pike striking at prey, sending the fish scattering at the surface, he describes the fish scales as floating. They don’t, they sink. So why did he say that.

One of the most enjoyable bits is the quite inevitable inclusion of the stories of pike attacking humans. It is true that there are some circumstances when I would not trail my fingers or toes in the water when boating (I once did so, and the feeling is odd, believe me, if there are very big pike round) so why do I find the stories so thoroughly unconvincing.

In one story the boy who was supposedly attacked by a pike on one day, recognised the fish caught the next day, as the same one! I strongly suspect that some of the swimmers bitten by pike have actually struck themselves on a stake or an underwater branch and, being embarrassed, made up the story.

There’s a nice one about a 48 lb pike choking on a 9 lb salmon. Would a fish of this size choke on a salmon that weight? I doubt it. One of the brilliant pieces in the book is entitled ‘Great pike and how they get weighed’. Here is a man who understands how fairy stories build, especially in Ireland. Then there’s Walkers account of Fred Buller’s (lost) fifty pounder, which, in this story by Walker himself, the weight is put at 65 pounds-ish. I never did go for the weight claimed by Richard, even less so after discussing it with him on two occasions.

So the book goes on, but I shall not for much longer. You’ll enjoy greatly some superb stories, well written, and well chosen by F.B. Whether it is Edward Spence extracts from “The Pike Fisher” or H.T. Sheringham (who seemed to use gut traces incidentally).