| PROFESSOR BARRIE RICKARDS | |
He is President of the Lure Angling Society, and President of the National Association of Specialist Anglers. |
There used to be a superb monthly magazine called ‘Angler’s World’, but it dealt with matters within the angler’s world. Nowadays the manner in which the rest of the world impinges on angling is becoming increasingly important, so my occasional jottings on what one might crudely term politics may also be important. I’m sure you’ll tell me if they are not. Several matters have caught my attention recently, the first of which is a kind of postscript to the article which appeared quite recently. Did anyone notice that the Angler’s Mail took up our discussions of numbers of anglers, and carried out their own survey? They came up with a figure of 3.4 million, which was supported by some ‘names’ and disputed by others. However, the newspaper did not effect a proper comparison of different sports, nor explain how it got its figures. The important point is not whether there really are 4 million anglers, but whether the figures are directly comparable with figures derived from identical sampling for other sports and hobbies. Ignore that point and the figure you come up with is more or less useless. Incidentally, the recent argument that walking is a more participated in hobby that angling is rather like arguing that watching TV is a bigger hobby than either. Everybody walks. But everybody does not indulge in real hobbies/sports. The Countryside Alliance March and the bias of the BBC And there’s the ‘little’ matter of the Countryside Alliance march, which had over 400,000 counted participants. The actual total was probably rather greater because a lot stopped short of the end, to avoid the crush, and the counting was done near the end. No doubt there are disputes about the number of anglers on the march, but make no mistake about it, there were thousands. There are lessons for anglers in the way the march was dealt with by the media. The BBC was severely criticised for prejudiced reporting, in my opinion quite correctly. It seems that one big name more or less lost his job for writing an anti-march article in a newspaper. That does seem a bit harsh to me, and it does not smack of free speech at all. But I watched a ‘Look East’ account of the march which I do consider deeply biased. The presenter was Stuart White, a man I had considered balanced until now. He began his report by referring to the ‘so-called Countryside Alliance’ thus immediately betraying his lack of balanced consideration. He then interviewed Richard Burge of the CA, giving him a hard, even rude, ride. We’ve come to expect this from interviewers these days, and we are all grown-ups so can live with it. But the nastiest part came right at the end when White asked Burge a question implying that we could now expect the CA to argue for those countryside people who had difficulty affording homes. Before Burge could answer White slammed the phone down on him! Like a naughty child trying to get the last word in. Before that Burge had made mincemeat of White’s questions, which may explain White’s petulance. I also saw several interviews where the theme was raised, “surely the march has been hijacked by the hunting fraternity?” What utter nonsense. If anything it’s the other way around. 400,000 hunters? The current thrust of the C.A is about hunting, but hunters are a small proportion of the CA. And the CA is fighting other battles already. My feeling at the end of the marchday and subsequent days was that the BBC was not only anti-CA, but anti-countryside. If angling is ever under pressure we’ll not get good press from the BBC, so it would be silly to think otherwise. I love football Now for a bit of football, which many of us love (I never give an angling lecture on the evening of a big match if I can possibly avoid doing so!). But did you see that on October 8th the England football team went to Downing St at the invitation of Mr Blair? Hang on a sec – did we win the World Cup? Does my memory fail me or were we kicked out at the quarterfinal stage? Obviously, I don’t mind that England players have a night with Mr Blair, but like so many of you I am wondering about the England anglers. This year our team was fourth, which is better than England did in the World Cup, and for the angling team that’s their worst result for some years. Whilst the England football team have, until recently, spent decades struggling to maintain mediocrity, the England anglers have been winning world titles and medals, both team and individuals, and in coarse, sea and game spheres. Angling will never get a fair hearing in the media stakes until those that lead us make a lot more noise than they do at the moment.
A bit of good news now. I had a holiday in Provence recently (though I did not get chance to visit Lake Cassein which is in the west of the region). I did, however, visit a piscatorial institute at Pignans, a small village not far east of Toulon. Here there was a superb display on about 30m of wall space (a real panorama) linking angling to many other countryside matters- other sports, water life, waterside life, hydrology, geology and so on. Elsewhere in the hall were excellent displays of tackle and up-to-date advice on where and how to fish in the southern half of France. And just to show how up to date they were, one of the groups of anglers on the panorama comprised bivvy men, rod parts, boilies and carp. Fred Wilton would have been proud – of the boilies anyway). Walker used rods that were too soft and hooks and baits that were too big I saw a letter from a Colin Burgess of Kent, published in the Angling Times (September 24th). Colin has just returned to angling after thirty years away (welcome back!) and he has cause to wonder what Richard Walker will be thinking from his “great lake in the sky”. Well one thing I can tell you, he would have been marching with the CA the other Sunday for starters! But what really seems to worry Colin is modern carp fishing tactics saying, “In my time, and Walker’s, carp could be caught on balanced bread crust and paste.” Well, the truth is that they can be caught a lot better on other baits. If you had been around in your thirty missing years you would have seen Redmire Pool quite taken apart by modern anglers like Kevin Clifford (and many others) using tactics which Walker and co. nearly discovered, but didn’t quite. They had an obsession with large baits, large hooks, and, much worse, rods which were too soft in action (the Mark IV carp rod, for example) to set the hooks. Read the literature and you cannot fail to notice that a great many fish fell off the hooks. When particle baits were introduced this became a thing of the past.
Two more editorial quotes from Angler’s Mail (but I’ll only deal with one in this article, leaving the other for next time!). The famous cook Prue Leith OBE wrote to the mail asking for advice on stocking a lake with carp (to keep the weed down). She also had the kindness to include a recipe for cooking carp, at which the editor commented “Thanks for your recipe (inset) – Not to be copied by Angler’s Mail readers.” Why? We’ve got to stop taking this silly attitude about cooking fish. I’m not suggesting that cooking our catch should become a big thing, but in moderation it doesn’t harm at all. After all, fish farm carp can be bought in wet fish shops. And in many parts of the world carp are eaten regularly. There is splendid carp fishing in Argentina, for example, and here a big carp is considered a good meal. I’ve seen several double-figure carp kept on stringers to keep them back for the evening barbecue. And remember also that in much of Europe the Green Party argues that the only reason for catching fish on rod and line is to eat them. We must be aware of these contrary and worrying views, and we must be ready to control them. I’ve run out of whingespace! In the next part I’ll tell you about the European Inland Fisheries Advisory Commission 22nd Session; eels; the other Angler’s Mail editorial comment, and a few other matters of choice nature. And yes, I am catching fish: my first three pike of the winter weighted 18lb, 11lb and 111/2 lb. |
