Barrie Rickards’ Angling – May

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.

Our Lesser Species

I WANT TO begin with a bit of information about some of our lesser species that we don’t fish for but which are still an important part of the fishy ecosystem.

Firstly burbot. I actually saw one of these caught, from the Yorkshire Derwent, when I was a boy. It went 3 lbs in weight and they were not altogether unusual in the 1940’s. But they seemed to die off in Yorkshire at about the same time as they did in East Anglia being last seen, doubtfully, in the early 1970’s. In the 1960’s they were still supposed to be present in Wicken Fen near Ely, but I set traps over quite a long period and caught only small pike for my trouble.

On Wicken Fen I had the feeling that the new ditch/drain drainage system, using JCBs and draglines, had exposed the burbot to lots of pike from the nearby major drains and that these pike had probably seen off the last of the burbot in that pocket. Certainly the ditches were cleaned out ten times more rapidly, and more frequently, than in previous years, increasing run off quite dramatically by the way.

Today Wicken Fen is managed more carefully, in this regard at least, so the burbot might survive there if re-introduced. Cambridge angler Tom Legge has wondered whether re-introductions will work, given global warming and all that. It is possible than the natural engine of the current global warming phase, which began long before man’s influence (if any), could have pushed the burbot towards the edge in the UK, because elsewhere it does seem to want rather cooler conditions but there could be a chance of it making it. But perhaps a low chance as Tom Legge implies.

The National Trust, the EA and English Nature

I’ve been reading two interesting leaflets recently, one by the National Trust on angling in their waters. This is an excellent document, and welcome too, for there was a period when the NT seemed to be yet another body intent on hindering angling.

There’s a lot of good sense in the document (0870 458 4000: www.nationaltrust.org.uk) with the exception of one sentence: “Sometimes even the absence of fish is of interest, because such waters are often of particular value for amphibians and invertebrates.” In other words fish eat the amphibians. But do they?

Waters which could hold fish but do not are unnatural and as such do not fit the environmentalist’s supposed principles of encouraging natural environments. Furthermore, the two best Great Crested Newt sites that I have ever experienced, since the early 1940’s have, respectively, a head of big pike and a big head of big rainbows. These two sites have been successful for the newts for decades. I believe that in a good ecosystem there is room for both fish and amphibians, as it always has been naturally. To exclude fish because it suits the newts/birds, invertebrates or what have you is to introduce artificially not nature. Get the ecosystem right and the rest will follows – naturally.

The other leaflet, by the Environment Agency and English Nature (do they still exist!) is about spined loach. Now here is a little fish that provides damned good food for young predators of many species, because the spined loach is small, fat and nutritious. But this leaflet implies that they are in danger. This is wrong. In the East Anglian region there are rivers and drains actually teeming with them. The region south of the Humber, past the Wash, and into Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambs and some regions west of there, is the long-time stronghold of the spined loach and as far as I can see it is still there in millions. If you doubt my word on this go to the end point of any IDB when they are actually de-weeding and lifting masses of weed out on to the grid. You will see thousands of spined loach. Colin Goodge and I once collected half a bucketful of them in a couple of minutes from a drain that was being lowered for cleaning. I haven’t yet come across a water in fenland where the spined loach is not common.

The similar stone loach is, of course, less common these days because the babbling brooks it prefers have been more than decimated. Even so, it has adapted. I know one pond, shallow and with a very thick layer of mud on the bottom, that is packed with them, and bullheads too. Maybe some of the green welly brigade need to get about and do some fieldwork.

A last point: one of the most fundamental observations of spined loach ecology, namely their ability to move through blanket weed by ‘walking’ with their spines, was made by none other than the legendary Richard Walker. Biologists were quite unaware of this. (I see that Hunters, the firm that gave the green welly respectability, is in difficulties, which is a pity. It also means I may have to think of a new phrase to describe those I usually nominate as the green welly brigade).

“Angling to face new enquiry into ‘cruelty'”

As I write this piece I haven’t yet seen anything in the angling presses about the headline in the Daily Telegraph for 10 April “Angling to face new enquiry into ‘cruelty'”. It seems that the question of whether fish can feel pain is to be considered by Government advisors. “We are starting to look at it,” says Sara Nathan, Chairwoman of the Home Office’s animal procedures committee. Really? Someone should tell her that millions of anglers have been looking at this for hundreds of years. And which government is this? Well surprise, surprise, it’s a Labour government, the very one that has repeatedly tried to woo anglers and claim that angling is safe in its hands.

I have no doubt at all that people like Martin Salter MP have angling’s best interests at heart, but a few people are not very powerful; and clearly lobbying has been taking place here otherwise the government would not be opening a can of worms deliberately. They won’t know how to fish with the can of worms though, that is the problem. Paul Baggaley of the NFA seems to have given a diplomatic, though neat reply to the news, but I doubt if he’s been quoted in full. And if Paul thinks the existing evidence is insufficient to swing the argument one way or the other, then he is wrong and the NFA could do with a better spokesman.

Sara Nathan is also reported as saying “I have recently written to a fish expert asking him to come on the group”. This beggars belief. A fish expert? Why just one? Who is it? What qualification do they have re fish and angling? What is the composition of the ‘group’? What are the expertises represented? All these questions we need to have answers to. In the past so-called investigations, such as the discredited ‘Medway’ report, half the people conscripted didn’t seem to have a clue. But I return to my earlier point: why is this government doing this, especially as it is totally unnecessary.

Zipping it up

Finally a matter of tackle. Fishing during the last winter, when it was a bit cold at times, I found myself cursing rucksack zips, and all-weather jacket zips. We have excellent fishing rucksacks these days, but have you noticed how any have zips that go round right angles on square pockets? These are fine on a balmy summer’s day, but not when it’s blasting wind and rain and its cold. Similarly, the long zips on fishing jackets have a standard catch-up mechanism which works fine when its calm and warm, but the very devil when its not. And these plastic zips however robust they look, don’t last do they?

On one of my jackets I’ve replaced the main zip with a heavy-duty metal one. Strangely enough the catch-up mechanism, which is exactly the same as in a plastic zip, seems to work a lot better. Originally the designs of angling rucksacks came from practising anglers – I remember Martin Gay and I, many years ago now, helping a very famous tackle manufacturer with rucksack design when angling rucksacks were nowhere to be had. Now, I suspect, they are simply following ‘traditional’ designs, whilst jackets seem largely designed by the posing trade.