The Pleasure Angle – Monsters Under the Bed

Mark Hodson

An angler since he can remember, Mark Hodson almost literally lives, eats and breathes fishing. A match angler in his youth, fishing for the junior Starlets, he turned to the dark side and joined the ‘floppy hat’ brigade in his college years. He worked in the tackle trade for ten years, on a part time or full time basis at Chaplains, one of Birmingham’s busiest tackle shops and managed the specialist department there for two years.

He now fishes just for fun, although the ‘floppy specialist hat’ still dominates his angling, his writing concentrates on getting the maximum enjoyment from your angling and trying something different from the norm.

Monsters Under the Bed

WHEN YOU’RE A kid you worry about things that you laugh at when you’re an adult. You grow up and quickly discover that there are no ‘Bogey Men’, witches or trolls that will come out of the wardrobe or from under the bed and devour us in the night.

Years later in adulthood you discover that these were just the worries of fantasy, an overactive imagination spurred on by a fairytale passed from person to person, getting more frightening with each telling. In adulthood we quickly learn that the things that we should be worrying about more than anything are those real threats, like your job, your mortgage, family, things that are fact and not fiction, things you have real control over. We very soon realise that most of our factual ‘Bogeymen’ are created by our own actions, mistakes or attitudes. Coarse angling in Britain at the moment is in danger of becoming nothing more than a small child cowering under the sheets, fretting over fairytales that will never come to fruition, instead of confronting the real problems that the sport faces.

Wanted dead or alive – ‘fish rustler’

Fish thefts: now there’s a hotly debated topic at the moment, you only have to look at the thread on the Predator section of the forum to see how very agitated people get about the subject. And what people too; we have editors of angling publications, famous anglers with weekly columns denouncing the evil immigrant threat to the UK’s freshwater fish population, and not forgetting the criminal underworld that have suddenly turned away from drug trafficking and ringing stolen motors to supplying the deadbait trade and eastern European restaurants fish menu’s. Ladies and gentlemen I give you the first book of modern day’s angling’s scariest fairytales.

The truth about fish thefts in the UK is occasionally it occurs but not in the manner or on the scale that the media frenzy driven by some tabloid style journalism suggests. The problem is that the fairytale is being told nationwide, and every time it gets told it gets worse, just like the Bogeyman under the bed.

Fish theft – the facts

In the past two years in the West Midland Police area, which outside of the capital houses the largest immigrant population in the UK, there have been nine recorded instances of the theft of fish. That’s a mighty 4.5 a year. Agghhhh, you might say, so it does happen. But let’s look a little deeper. All nine reports were theft from garden ponds. Enough said, probable suspect, jealous neighbour or Mr Heron. No thefts reported to the police from commercial, club or other angling venues. The EA did have 42 reports regarding fish theft last year (thank you to Chris Bishop for this information), half of which at least they put down to false calls with good intent when members of the public had seen anglers placing fish in keepnets. This leaves 21 reports for the whole country – oh my its an epidemic!

Real monsters

Now if the angling media is to be believed immigrants are fishing in our waters for their suppers up and down the country, lining the banks, stripping fisheries bare of their stocks. Anyone ever came across this?

Now I fish up to three times a week all over the West Midlands and further afield, at any given chance I also get down to some stretch of water of some description just to look around, but I have never seen a immigrant taking fish for his supper. I have seen the odd member of the travelling community and the odd ‘normal’ angler taking a small pike or zander for the BBQ as his mate said they were tasty (they only ever do it once though, realising that once you’ve cleaned them and got through all the bones a burger or sausage is the easier and tastier option). I have also seen anglers taking the odd fish to fill livebait tanks, bait freezers or garden ponds, but never more than half a dozen fish.

Now back to our immigrant brothers who are stealing all our fish. Let’s just use a little common sense and swap places with them. Are you going to spend two hours in the freezing cold catching 2lb of silver fish to fry up, or are you going to get half a loaf and lure the local waterfowl population your way and have some tasty duck, goose or even swan. You’re going for the waterfowl aren’t you, or to save the hassle, a McDonalds, because that’s what these people are here for, to eat McDonalds like the rest of us, not eat what they ate back home.

Then there’s the commercials hastily setting up pit traps, night patrols and erecting signs to stop the immigrants stealing all their F1, F2, F3, F4 carp or whatever they have paid thousands for in the past week, that also has a suicidal feeding habit and jumps from the water into a waiting batter mix. They’re not worried are they, because there is no threat.

British Waterways, controller of the largest commercial fisheries in the Midlands, places such as Earlswood lakes, Blythe Waters, Makins, Drayton Reservoir, etc, state they have had no reported instances, neither do they believe it’s a problem.

Another monster

You know, I once read an article from one of the UK’s leading anglers who stated he thought it was a possibility that all the large Zander he had caught from the Severn had been taken home for the pan by immigrants, as they had disappeared. The suggestion is laughable. Because if it were true that these immigrants were catching all these specimen fish in vast quantities week in and week out and eating them, instead of driving buses, cleaning toilets and serving milkshakes, they would be writing angling articles or have their own series on Sky, because they must be better anglers than you or I.

The occasional immigrant angler will be taking the odd fish, as British anglers always have done especially in years gone by, but as to this practice impacting on the quality of fishing and national fish stocks in general its nothing to be worried about, you should be more worried about winning the lottery or catching bird flu, neither of which are likely to happen are they.

Professional Fish Thieves

To find them you have to just look under the Angling Times’ ‘wanted’ column!, Te he, sorry couldn’t help myself with that one. Anyway back to the facts.

I am Mr professional fish thief looking to supply some dodgy fish to the bait trade. I go to my local marina, broad, or river in the winter and find the roach shoaled up tightly. Me and my netting party of at least four others do really well and catch 2000 4-6” roach. We take off our wading gear and stash our large nets (needed to catch so many fish in a large area). We dump them in our motors and off we go with our loot. We sell them a dodgy bait dealer and he gives the princely sum of £ 200. That’s £ 40 each. Oh well, its back to drug trafficking and screwing cars as we can make thousands at that. £ 200 you say, is that all?! Yes, it’s true. Mr bait dealer can buy 2000 4-6″ live roach from a registered dealer for as little as £ 800 legitimately. On the basis that stolen goods trade hands at a quarter of their retail price, £ 200 it is; can’t see the mafia rushing across to take control of this little earner can you. Its not happening is it, another fairy tale.

What about carp thefts I hear you ask. There was one investigation into carp thefts at a West Midlands specimen and commercial water two years ago. The water in question was very secure and sometimes had people on site overnight. Nevertheless, evidence suggested that something suspicious was occurring and so police officers attended the site through the hours of darkness over a month long period to investigate. The officers found that the rumoured ‘Carp Rustlers’ were in fact regular anglers breaking the rules and fishing into the hours of darkness.

I have searched numerous vehicles and anglers thinking them to be stealing fish in the past and found them only to be normal anglers, breaking fishery rules to get a new personal best. Occasionally fish are removed from waters, but this is not new, it has occurred since the days of Walker, the fish often end up in syndicates or other waters more attractive to anglers and usually die due to the stress of the move anyway. This isn’t theft for commercial gain, its anglers being idiots, that’s all. Its not widespread and its nothing we should be worrying about on a national scale. After all, unlike oil or iron ore, big carp are plentiful and there’s more every year and as a result the price is plummeting. Not something worth stealing now is it. Again one or two anglers breaking the rules sparks a rumour of fish thieves, not wanting to own up to their rule breaking and lose face they let the rumour continue and hey presto another fairy tale is written and is doing the rounds.

Fish do disappear, its what they do best, they also die of natural causes, sometimes whole generations over a couple of weeks for no apparent reason. When anglers don’t catch them anymore, they assume they have been stolen, not died or simply migrated naturally to another stretch or removed by the controlling club, etc. Anglers have grown to like their fairytales, they make better excuses for not catching.

Real Monsters

The real monsters under the bed we should be worrying about are these. Come June hundreds if not thousands of barbel will die as they are released back into de-oxygenated water too early by inexperienced anglers. Hundreds if not thousands of pike, perch and zander will perish as anglers try predator fishing for the first time using cheap readymade traces that inevitably break or unsuitable tackle such as gags that damage fish beyond repair. Over the summer, thousands of fish will die or be crushed in poorly positioned keepnets or damaged through poor handling. Fish such as pike and zander will be thrown up the bank by ill educated match or pleasure anglers thinking they are protected their cherished silver fish, not realising what they do actually causes the reverse. Carp will die as anglers don’t prepare particles correctly or use ill thought out rigs that tether them to their doom. Then there’s water abstraction, pollution and hormones in the water changing the sex of fish. And not forgetting the thousands of Cormorants that, unlike the rest of our immigrant population, do actually take at least 1lb of fish a day for their supper.

So as you can see, we need to throw away the book of fairytales and take a good long look at the real monsters that threaten angling today. They are not fish rustlers or immigrants, but the problems of our own making. Last week an angler declared to me that after reading the Angling Times he was on the look out for fish thieves, he said he had found evidence, a large amount of scales just like the papers said he would, and he showed me the area, I bent down and found a large patch of white blossom, that admittedly from a distance look like scales. Trouble was, said angler had already told a number of others that the fish thieves had come to town; too late, another fairytale was spreading.

Banishing the Demons

On 8th April 2006 a momentous thing occurred that went under most fishing radars, that’s because it was in the Telegraph’s family and education section. I missed it, but it was sent to me by a non angler who thought I would be interested. This was the most pro – fishing piece I have ever or could ever have hoped to see in a national newspaper, quotes from David Bellamy, Richard Wightman from the EA, the Police, head teachers all excelled the virtues and positives of angling over two thirds of a broadsheet. It talked how angling was being used as an alternative to the drug Ritalin in treating children with Attention Deficit Disorder and talked about how this stress reliving peaceful past-time had normally uncontrollable kids sitting peacefully for hours at a time showing powers of concentration and a level of interest never before thought possible.

This is what needs to be on the front of the angling weeklies if we are to banish angling’s demons, inside needs to be education for those that need it to help put a stop to the real problems we do face. The more we concentrate on our positives, the education of anglers and non anglers alike and promoting the sport, the more people will support us and the causes we fight and help us banish our real demons. What we don’t need are more fairytales that have us looking fearfully under our beds, when what we should be afraid of is actually lying right beside us.