| PROFESSOR BARRIE RICKARDS | |
Professor Barrie Rickards is President of the Specialist Anglers Association (SAA) and President of the Lure Angling Society (LAS), as well as a very experienced and successful specialist angler with a considerable tally of big fish to his credit. He is author of several fishing books, including the classic work ‘Fishing For Big Pike’, co-authored with the late Ray Webb and only recently his first novel, ‘Fishers On The Green Roads’ was published. He has been an angling writer in newspapers and magazines for nigh on four decades. Barrie takes a keen interest in angling politics. Away from angling Barrie is a Professor in Palaeontology at the University of Cambridge, a Fellow of Emmanuel College and a curator of the Sedgwick Museum of Geology. |
CORMORANT STEW
Just in case people missed it there’s a lovely article in the Saturday Telegraph of 22 January by Adam Nicolson on the subject of cormorant stew. A lovely thought. When Jeremy Wade and I were up the Amazon a few years ago the Caboclo Indian with us tried to shoot cormorants with his trusty shotgun. The bullets simply bounced off the cormorants! When I say bullets, I think they were actually cartridges full of swan shot. He reckoned cormorants made good stew. Personally, I was glad the shot bounced off them.
This article by Nicolson is very humorous, well written and nice to see someone in a broadsheet not cow-towing to the RSPB. I think he has one thing wrong though. He seems to think the inland cormorant problem is caused by the exceptionally good condition, fish-wise of our waters. In fact, it’s all relative: the freshwaters are in a damn sight better state than the sea at the moment, but that doesn’t make them good. He’s right about cormorant stew isn’t he? Well, he is if you have to eat it. I’ll watch. He also mentioned his experiences in the Faeroes when locals like to eat Manx Shearwaters. I’ve eaten these myself, and they’re utterly dreadful. I reckon cormorants will be similar. Pity really, as they might have caught on in the trendier restaurants.
Sea Bass
Talking of which, I know I’ve mentioned this before, but do you all feel as I do about the menu item ‘sea bass’. We only have one bass in this country, and it lives in the sea. We don’t talk about sea cod, sea plaice etc, etc, (though there’s a faint case for sea cod of course). Now believe it or not, they’ve started talking about sea cockle! I ask you. Let’s start a campaign. Every time we see sea bass on a UK menu let’s draw the chef’s attention to the silliness. It’s an affectation of US origins, where, of course, they have every right to call them sea bass to distinguish them from freshwater bass. Ditto France.
Great Whites do attack boats and surfboards
I had an interesting experience in Australia in December. The angling I’ll relate to you later, if not in this article then in the next. Part way into December we went swimming with dolphins. Well, the boss did. I stayed on the boat. As a more-or-less non-swimmer the sea looked a bit rough to me (i.e. the waves were higher than three inches) and the thought of being trailed behind a launch on the end of a 30-yard rope was too reminiscent of trolling. Anyway, it was a great success, and many dolphins were seen swimming with the trolled humans. I got it all on video including superb footage of dolphins. One week later, and less than a mile along the shore from where the dolphins swam, a big great white knocked a young man off his surfboard, as he was being trailed along by a speedboat, and ate him. More than one great white was involved, and a short while later two great whites, presumably the same fish (?) attacked the speedboat in which the young man’s friends were. So ‘Jaws’ was right after all: great whites will attack boats. Equally important is that it was clear that these fish knew that their prey was on the surfboard and was not the surfboard itself. That’s why they knocked him off. The surfboard was quite unmarked. They also knew that prey was in the boat.
This dreadful event produced the usual dichotomy of responses. One group were all for slaughtering all sharks; the other group considered the sharks blameless and that they should be left alone. We all know the great white is an endangered species so I guess the prevailing view will be the second, once all the perfectly understandable fuss has died down. All I can say is that I’m glad they weren’t in the bay a week early when they’d have had a choice of fifteen humans all dressed up like seals in their black wet suits. Oh, and I’m glad I’m a more-or-less non-swimmer.
Terrible time in Australia – not!
Australia in December wasn’t my usual working stint, when I have very little free time, but nor was it entirely a holiday. We had lots of friends and relatives to see, dinners to attend, etc. Terrible. I did take the rods. I now have a telescopic beach caster, which is excellent. I also took a small spinning rod, made in Taiwan back in the 1960’s and a small fly rod suitable for 4/5 lines and small waters.
The sea fishing went fairly well and I caught Australian salmon (a Pollack-like species), flat heads, trevally (I think!), mullet and swimmer crabs. The last are good eating; and so-called because one of their claw sets is a pair of paddles which enables them to swim well. Good eating and a delicacy in restaurants. I also caught another fish that I couldn’t identify. We found a splendid cave on an island near Adelaide and it was a pleasure just to be there, in the sun, with hardly another human in sight.
Freshwater Smoked Carp?
The trout fishing failed, probably because we found the lovely little river just a bit too late to get the measure of it. On one day we fished for trout in the morning, sea fish over lunch, (unsuccessfully) and carp in the afternoon. Carp, of course, are regarded as vermin in Australia and any caught have to be killed. I have caught them before in New South Wales and Victoria, but this time we were in South Australia where the River Murray meets the sea. Just before it does so, at a world famous nature reserve called The Coorong, there is a very large lake, L. Alexandina. You can’t see the other side, as it’s a few kilometres across, but shallow.
The first visit was observation, and we found some youngsters with a heap of dead carp, some with their heads chopped off. The second trip was in a thunderstorm which looked more dangerous by the minute, so I packed up and did a runner after a couple of missed bites. The third trip was the more usual wall-to-wall sunshine so we settled down with the seven foot spinning rod, a one ounce sliding lead and a couple of grains of sweetcorn. Bites came every few minutes – a tapping at the rod end followed by a steady pull. The carp, beautiful commons were all about 7-9 lbs (although the boys I’d seen the week before had good doubles as well). They fought extremely well and, strangely enough, just as I was about to cut their heads off they each wriggled free and swam away. I suppose someone else will kill them in due course and they’ll be added to the fertiliser that carp there are usually used for. Or perhaps, they’ll turn up in a posh restaurant where smoked carp is now becoming an ‘in’ dish. Maybe they should say ‘freshwater smoked carp’!
