Barrie Rickards’ Angling – News & Views

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.

Rainfall and drainage

I noticed a letter from Stephen le Tissier in Angling Times, in which he says “…the reason local drainage networks are not always able to cope is simple. Urban development means that rainfall is no longer able to drain into the ground.” In fact this is only a partial truth and Stephen is correct only if he is talking about urban areas which, as you will agree, is not clear from the above. In fact, nationally, (including urban factors) the reason rainfall does not soak back into the water table as much as it did even fifty years ago, is because the predecessors of the Environment Agency over- drained the land, straightening and dredging rivers, putting in herring-bone drainage channels beneath the ground on hillsides, and generally making sure that nowhere did the rainfall have time to soak in. Their drainage engineers wanted the water off the land – fast. By the 1970s water in the UK reached the sea nine times faster than it would have done naturally. Hence flooding. Hence water shortages. It will be many decades before there is much reversal of this, even though the young ecologists of the E.A. are now aware of the problem.

Farmyards do smell you know!

Saw an article in the Saturday Telegraph for giving good reason for not moving from the town to the countryside. It was by someone called Judy Rumbold and was, in effect, an advert for a book on the same subject she is about to publish. These people really make you squirm. And most certainly, the countryside doesn’t need them. How can you not think that farmyards smell? It beggars belief. I mention this because there is, in angling, a bit of a divide between these anglers who live and angle in the countryside and those who live in towns and may or may not fish in the countryside. Certainly those anglers who denigrate the Countryside Alliance, usually live in towns. And most, if not all the anti anglers live in towns. You would have thought that frequent visits to fish in the countryside would make anglers aware of the special needs of the countryside and the special place it has in our society. But it seems it doesn’t always work like that. Almost on the same subject, did you see the story of the huntsman who turned himself in after his dog chased and killed a mouse!? Robin Page has just tried the same ploy. Because their acts are criminal you know.

Continued failure with mullet

I thought you might enjoy my continued failure with large grey thin-lipped mullet. I have now hooked one though, albeit briefly. It took a tiny spinner and promptly fell off. Bread they don’t like. Whether it’s because its Tesco’s I don’t know, but not a sniff at all. I can see why they don’t like small fish, because where I’m fishing for them they are surrounded by thousands of fry. The fry don’t give a stuff, and nor do the mullet. But I have now a cunning plan, involving flies, maggots, and small strips of mackerel and/or sprat flesh. The next time I mention the elusive mullet, it will be with a fish caught.

Wye and Usk salmon funding is laudable, but…

I was interested in the story of the Wye and Usk Foundation getting 5 million pounds from a variety of sources to improve salmon fishing, and in the editorial by Richard Lee of Angling Times rightly applauding that achievement. But much as I respect Richard I do think he over eggs the prospects of coarse fishermen getting substantial funding, at least at present – despite what Martin Salter claims. It would be nice if coarse fishing had the Kudos amongst the powers that be (primarily components of the chattering classes) but it simply does not have this. Many of such people look down on coarse fishermen and no matter how professionally the application is made, no matter what benefits will pertain to the community, there will be a natural resistance to giving money to help. We can do more in the sphere of thoroughly professional applications, it is true, and to that extent I go along with Richard Lee: if we don’t do it we won’t get it anyway. But the funding bodies, for their part, ought to be able to recognise a worthy idea even if it has not had all the I’s dotted and the t’s crossed in protocol terms. This they do not do. Have you ever put in for a grant for angling? Well I have, successfully, and it is costly and time consuming and you can feel the resistance. Mention the word salmon or trout, and the door opens a chink. Mention coarse fish and you’ll have to shout through the letter box. Or kick the door in. Knowing the reality you can succeed, but go in naively and you will not. And remember this, an idea that is thrown out once will rarely be considered again even if prepared in spot-on bureaucratic fashion. Don’t let me discourage you though – go for it. But go for it hard.

Pike for the pot

There has been a debate recently about the wisdom or otherwise of taking the occasional pike for the pot. The best summary of the issues was in an editorial by James Holgate in “Pike and Predators” and I find I share his views totally. There is no point in insisting as a matter of principle, that all pike must be returned when at the same time you are using other species as bait; dead or alive doesn’t matter. Of course, most pike anglers return all the pike they catch, me included, but I think that the principle should be retained that fishing for food is not wrong, within reason. Immigrants wantonly plundering our fisheries is not “within reason”; it will, in fact, destroy fisheries in the short to medium term.

EA underestimates immigrants

This leads me onto something else, notably the Environment Agency – again. Now, I will repeat what I have said many times; I am not agin the EA, and have worked with the body many times over many years. But have you noticed how, when there is a perceived crisis – perceived by anglers that is – the EA play it down, mouth what amounts to diplospeak-cum-appeasement of someone or other. They have just done it again considerably underestimating the number of incidents involving immigrants. And they’ve had to admit they got it wrong. It’s not the first time they have behaved like this. They responded in exactly like manner over the zander crisis of the 1960s and the cormorant problem, which began in the 1980s. In both these cases they were eventually proved wrong. What they need to do is get their heads around the fact that out there are many very experienced and observant anglers who are quite capable of analysing data. What is more, many of these anglers spend a great deal more time at the waterside than do EA officers (and more than the RSPB and RSPCA whilst we are on the subject). I’m not sure we’ll ever crack this one because the rather blinkered initial responses of the EA and its predecessors has been with us since the 1960s. Before that the river Boards were rather small committees and always had a few anglers on them – Richard Walker for one.

Hair rigging deadbaits

Not so long ago I was reading a good article by Bob Morris on hair-rigging deadbaits for pike. It may be that I’m some kind of stick in the mud, but I have never seen the sense of hair rigs for pike. Of course they do no harm, and the slight risk of deep hooking must be reduced even more. So must the risk of missing a run. The hair rig for pike is closely similar to the rig used by Ray Webb back in the 1960s; he used a single treble well back in the tail of a whole bait, but to avoid deep hooking not because be thought the pike were extra sensitive. To my mind if a pike picks up a deadbait it doesn’t give a stuff whether it has hooks in it or not, as long as it can get its teeth into the bait. But I’m have another go this winter.

Ray Webb, a real legend

Talking of Ray Webb reminds of another matter. To those anglers around in the 1960s and 1970s Ray was, rightly, a legend. For some time now I have been planning to write a biography of him, using my personal experience of fishing with him often, my correspondence files, and my photographs I plan to publish this, first off on Fishingmagic.com (editor permitting) as a series of chapters. I’ve already done quite a lot of work on the book but would welcome input from other anglers if possible; anecdotes, copies of letters, photographs, and so on. Everything would be acknowledged in the book. Ray’s is a rather remarkable story, his contribution to angling quite prodigious, and well worth recording.