| PROFESSOR BARRIE RICKARDS | |
He is President of the Lure Angling Society, and President of the National Association of Specialist Anglers. |
Anglers read angling newspapers, to some extent anyway, but they are not widely read when it comes to spotting angling items in national or local newspapers. In one sense they are not missing very much because most of the stories are of the ‘pike eats horse’ variety.
I do tend to read several different newspapers each week and I have an informal and unofficial network of readers who draw my intention to items of interest to, or about, anglers and angling. I’m not quite sure how this network of helpers arose. It is entirely voluntary, and may have arisen because I have fought battles for anglers over many years and people have become aware that I need information and ammunition, so they send it to me. This is a journalist’s dream of course, though I am not entirely a journalist. Anyway, long may I continue to be kept informed.
The subject of this particular contribution is pike and their behaviour as predators (it’s the usual silly season topic, comes up every August without fail). In fact I missed the original article in the Court and Social section of the Daily Telegraph of August 12th (the Court and Social is not one I habitually read – to be quite honest, only once in my life, when it recorded my promotion to rank of University Professor!). On this occasion it recorded the old Fishing Gazette editor’s story of a pike that refused to let go of a trout it had grabbed as he, R.B. Marston, was playing it to the bank. The publication of this story then resulted, on Aug. 17th, of two letters in the Saturday Telegraph, both of which are interesting to anglers.
The first letters, from a Matthew Baker of Cumbria, after giving an account of when an otter refused to let go of a sea trout he was playing in (that must have been an experience!) then goes on to say of the R.B Marston story ‘Encounters of the Marston variety are rare but not unheard of.’ Hang on a minute. Is he talking about the same planet that I live on? Incidents of pike grabbing trout that are being played are common, so common in fact that nobody makes an issue of it anymore (except at particular waters where there will be a cry to have all the pike killed). And it’s not just pike grabbing trout. They grab a number of different species being played in. As we’ll all know, but as the non angling media will not, the reason they grab the fish (apart from intending to eat them) is because it is behaving erratically, abnormally, and looks to be in difficulties. For the same reason pike grab our artificial lures – whether they look like trout or pike!
But why don’t they let go of the fish they have grabbed? This was the second part of the conundrum of the letters, and it brings us to the second part of the letters of Aug 17, from a Michael Coombs of Buckingham. He says ‘the teeth of the pike curve backwards to prevent the escape of prey. With the added force applied by the angler, it would have been impossible for the pike to have released its hold on the trout.’
What nonsense. As we all know, the pike’s teeth, most of them anyway, do point backwards (and some perhaps curve backwards) but the proof that the pike can release its prey at any time it chooses to do so is apparent the moment the pike sees the angler – it simply opens its jaws and releases the prey fish unless the angler’s hook has taken a purchase.
The reason the pike hangs onto the prey until it sees the angler (apart from wanting to eat the prey) is that it experiences no problem in the tug of war going on. Pike are genetically programmed to expect to have to pull for their supper on occasions – as, for example, when feeding hard in thick pond weed or lily beds. The fact that many pike do not have to feed in such conditions does not mean they are not programmed to do so. They have over some million years. The pull of an angler’s rod and line is as nothing to a pike. In fact the actual pull rarely reaches 2 lbs, as the bend/curve of the rod indicates. This is part of a general thesis, of course. Fish in general are not disturbed by the anglers pull. There are exceptions to this of course, but the response is one of puzzlement – this is a different question and one I may look at on another occasion.
The silly season is not over yet. And I may be fortunate enough in missing some of the daftest items. But do not let me off the hook. If you come across some media frenzy with some bizarre angling story, let me know through the editor and I’ll attempt to put it in the context.Finally, Matthew Baker mentions that seals occasionally take salmon as they are played in. Not just salmon, Mr Baker. They also take dead baits intended for pike, as I know to my cost when I had to play a seal for half an hour on one occasion.
Fortunately for me, and the seal, it contrived to release my herring just as I was working out how to land and handle it.
