Several serious matters have taken my attention recently, some political, some philosophical, so I thought I’d try them out on you, learn your views on these things.
I’ll begin with a philosophical matter (possibly with political overtones, namely the question of line class records. Basically what this is about is that a 30lb tuna could hardly be classed as a world (or whatever) record, but caught on, say, 2lb b.s. line, there may be available a category of “world record”, organised by some organisation or other, to which you could make claim should you achieve this dubious feat.
Now, the next point to consider is whether this feat was deliberate, or accidental. Not so long ago a match angler landed a 30lb pike on 3lb b.s. line. He wasn’t fishing for pike, of course, but he must have exhibited considerable skill to land the fish. This kind of thing happens to us all from time to time. The result is very laudable, but you wouldn’t think of claiming a world record, would you? It’s worthy of praise, a story, but not a record: There is no premeditated skill involved.
In this country we have never had line class records so my pike angler would not, in fact, have found a world record category in which he could apply. But there is an organisation in the world (I forget its name, but it might be the International Game Fishing Association) which does run line records for various species, and to some extent this has impinged on some of the UK’s sea anglers who are aware of this, and fish to break such records. I’m sure they are in a minority amongst sea anglers, and of all my sea-angling friends I know of none who do this.
Now, however, line class records have crept into carp fishing, or at least into fly fishing for carp, for in a recent Angler’s Mail, a Mr. Howard Barclay has been taken to task by Martin James and others for using a 6lb leader to fish for 30lb carp. It is rare indeed that I find myself in agreement with Martin James, but this time I think he is spot-on. It is conceivable that there might be circumstances when a 6lb line was considered necessary to catch a 30lb carp. I can’t really see it myself, but it is possible: I remember that on some Cheshire meres, in the 1970s, anglers needed 5lb line to catch big double-figure fish, though the circumstances were rather special.
There is a difference between finding it necessary to use a fine line in order to get a bite, or circumvent some physical problem, and deliberately using an unnecessarily fine line so that, should you succeed, you will be eligible for a world record. That, in principle, seems very wrong to me, because it is deliberately putting the fish at risk of breakage. It is the one area in the whole sphere of angling where the sport is open to valid criticism. As it happens, line class records are sought by very few anglers in the UK, and probably even less commonly in the UK itself, (a few Englishmen abroad maybe?) so it is more of an international problem than a home one. But I do hope it doesn’t creep into our country by stealth. I hope Mr Barclay re-thinks his claimed unrepentant stance, although from his published letter (A.M. March 9th) you do not get the impression that he is a glory seeker.
In short then, use the correct gear for the job, which is to land and return fish safely unless they are to eat (in which case you would not use abnormally light gear in the first place). A final point: British records, as we now have them, are a celebration of the fish, rather than the anglers who land them (proof of that is that you can often remember the fish, not the captor!); line class records seem to me to be a celebration, or rather an attempted celebration, of the angler not the fish.
Cormorants
Now to change tack. Cormorants again. It seems that a recent BBC radio programme quoted one scientist as saying that people shouldn’t be stupid enough to set up trout farms and not expect cormorant predation. Well, that’s not exactly helpful is it? Even if cormorant predation is to be expected. After all, rearing trout is a legitimate business and contributes to the economy. I have a friend who, until quite recently, owned three trout farms. He didn’t used to have a cormorant problem. He does now. That is the fact of the matter. Whatever silly spin the scientists and RSPB put on this, the fact is that there are vastly more inland cormorants now than there were 15 years ago (even ten years ago).
The same radio programme quoted another scientist as saying “Anglers have just got to get used to having them around” (cormorants that is). Even if they destroy the ecosystem Mr. Scientist? Of course, no one in their right mind expects a good angling press from the BBC, any more than one would have from the RSPB or RSPCA. The are all vapid left-wingers in my view.
The head of the Environment Agency is now Baroness Young (ex-RSPB VIP). She was quoted recently – and she has not denied the quote so far as I am aware – as saying that anglers, on the cormorant question, should think not only of fish, but of the overall ecology. Precisely so, madam. That is exactly what anglers have been doing all along. However, anglers realise, much more so than any birdies, that in aquatic systems the fish population underpins so much, especially many birds.
My own lake has been totally cleaned out by cormorants twice now. On the first occasion the Great Crested Grebes, which had been a most welcome presence for twenty years, had to leave because the cormorants ate all their food. The cormorants also left, of course. When the water had partially recovered, the black beasts came back and cleaned the place out again. We still have no grebes, just a few kingfishers and herons which seem to specialise on a different prey size to cormorants. Those people, whether EA officers, scientists, or others, who claim from their armchair that cormorants are not a problem are talking complete and utter rubbish. And that includes Baroness Young. And, to date, no-one has challenged the calculations I published some years ago, working in the Anglian region from official figures on water biomass and cormorant numbers which proved conclusively that cormorants in the numbers now in-land, are a serious menace to the ecosystems. The silly methods proposed, for (local) frightening away birds, are not going to have any effect – after all, the birds do have to feed somewhere, sometime. And anyway, to suggest that frightening is necessary a) admits there is a problem and b) surely goes against the RSPB principles of not frightening birds!
It is sometimes argued that culling is not the answer to the cormorant problem, that it will not work. Well, in the first place it hasn’t been tried in recent times; and in the second it did work when it was last tried in the Fens in the 1950’s and 1960’s. And in the USA where the birdie lobby initially prevented culling, government research over a decade proved cormorants were the real menace anglers had claimed, the cormorants were then culled, and it worked. It’s not necessary to kill any birds: simply remove the eggs from the nests for a couple of years.
No, on matters of cormorants, anglers, who are on the banksides far more frequently than the pro-cormorant lobby, have got it right and the rest have got it wrong. The ‘rest’ don’t care about fish anyway. I’m only sad that our national angling bodies (The National Anglers’ Alliance) are not yet strong enough to lobby effectively against such giants as the RSPB.
Anglers And The Countryside Alliance
I wonder if the RSPB supports the Countryside Alliance? I must ask. I doubt it, because anglers are very gradually shifting towards the C.A., so I shouldn’t think the birdies will be going the same way as anglers. I saw a letter recently from an anti-C.A. angler, a Mr. Griffiths from Wrexham. He said, “The CA was set up solely to protect fox hunting.” Where on earth do people like this get their silly ideas? The CA grew out of a changed British Field Sports Society. Even the BFSS wasn’t ‘solely’ about fox hunting as the title suggests, and as anyone who has attended a meeting can testify. I wasn’t personally so keen on the BFSS largely because their members I met in Cambridge seemed to live on a different planet to me. So I was cautious about the CA. The CA, Mr. Griffiths, was set up so that all countryside interests, not merely sports, could unite in defending all the countryside against the predation it was suffering. Go to a meeting Mr Griffiths and you’ll find barely a fox hunter in sight. Indeed at my own East Anglian meetings anglers outnumber the rest. The CA does not need anglers for its numbers (for starters, how many anglers join anything at all?) but it needs them because anglers are involved in the countryside.
Of course, the battle they are currently fighting most strongly is the fox hunting battle, but that did not stop them sending PETA back to the US, on behalf of angling, did it? The fox hunting so-called debate has at long last been brought into clear focus with the abysmal decision of the Scottish Parliament. It’s not about cruelty at all. It’s class warfare pure and simple. Fox hunters are seen, falsely, as toffs and in Scotland that is intolerable. The proof of this statement lies in the related legislation of the recent bill which makes it clear that those in the business of fox hunting will not be compensated. If that isn’t class warfare I don’t know what is. And to those anglers who themselves want fox hunting banned I say this: when and if all these anti-fox hunters get their way, and fox hunting is banned, what do you think the antis will do with their time? Do you think they will go quietly home and put their slippers on? Come on, think about it: how will they then fill their time at weekends? Shooting is not easy to disrupt, but angling is. Angling will be their next target, because all they want to do is destroy people’s freedom, create anarchy, destroy the fabric of society. The are sick, inadequate people. When angling sends them away, tails between legs, they’ll set about old ladies with pets. I don’t have any great brief for fox-hunting. It’s not something I want to do myself, but I believe in people’s freedom, the right to make their own choice, the right to self regulation (just as anglers are doing with the Code of Conduct, and indeed fox hunters have done with their own code).
Anti-Social Acts
The latest anti-social act is being perpetrated in Scotland (again). Here, the long-established salmon fisheries are being turned over to the crofters – ‘salmon clearances’ is what it’s being called. Now I’m sure I’ll never get the chance to fish one of these expensive rivers, but I do not begrudge others being able to afford to do so. Unlike some. More importantly I’d like to see salmon continue to be protected and cosseted the way these landowners have done. I can just imagine what will happen when their arms are wrestled from the tiller. And it seems quite a lot of the ‘crofters’ don’t want the changes anyway: the move for changes comes solely from people in Edinburgh. When there’s no decent salmon fishing left in Scotland I wonder who will get the blame? Not the politicians, that’s for sure.
Well, there’s some interesting stuff for you all to ponder on. What do YOU think?
