| PROFESSOR BARRIE RICKARDS | |
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. |
Angling Shows – are there too many?
Did you note the debate about whether or not there are too many angling shows? I suppose for the professional angler there can never be too many, unless the total cost of putting up a stand becomes prohibitive, but for the amateur angler there certain can be too many. I suppose I get to two in a year, not always the same ones.
The debate was triggered off by the Urban Escapes show at Waltham Abbey in Essex, which, had, it seems, very very low turnouts. I don’t know about you but that title would turn me off: if I were a countryman (I am) I’d be expecting masses of townies and if I were a townie I’d be saying “well who wants to visit the countryside anyway?” (You’ll remember the little survey I mentioned some time ago which pointed up just how ‘opposed!’ townies were to the countryside)! When you get a bad turn out it really is depressing for the trade stands.
Stillwater Barbel
I saw an interesting letter the other week from a guy complaining about stillwater barbel, saying that stillwater barbel are deprived of the fun of breeding. Doesn’t seem to bother stillwater chub a lot, or the fish in my fish tank and garden pond for that matter, none of which breed. Chub may breed in some waters and it wouldn’t surprise me at all if barbel began to do so in due course. Whether that’s a good thing in itself is another question maybe. I’m sitting firmly on the fence on this one, not my usual position I think you’ll agree. I wouldn’t like to see, at all, every water with the same species in it, and I much prefer to go to a barbel river for my barbel. But if the barbel in stillwaters are healthy and well looked after, I don’t really see it as any more anomalous than many other things in UK angling. Since I wrote that last sentence I heard of a stillwater where barbel have bred successfully and thrive in good condition. It doesn’t change my argument or position on this at the moment, but I’m always open to persuasion.
Havens for Wildlife – except fish
A booklet which may drop through your letterbox – it has just dropped through mine – is “Garden ponds and boggy areas: havens for wildlife” published by English Nature (as was). A haven for wildlife except, that is, for fish.
That’s the trouble with these born-again biologists (or born recently biologists): they cannot and will not see fish as part of the wildlife ecosystem around ponds. I quote, “Finally, do you really want those fish? If you can bear to give them away (don’t just release them into the wild), or just not replace them when the heron has breakfasted, you’ll enjoy many more species of animal in your pond.” Complete rubbish. I have had ponds of various shapes, sizes and designs for over fifty years now, always with a range of fish in them; and if the ponds are healthy, as mine are, they have a huge range of wild creatures, including newts.
This booklet illustrates and talks abut just about everything – except fish. There’s a big range of fish you can have in a ponds, including small species like sticklebacks, minnows, gudgeon, loach and bullheads none of which need a current of water as it happens). But the large species do no harm to wildlife either. I have newts in my pond at the appropriate time of year, and up to 200 frogs at any one time. (I counted 220 on one afternoon last year). Of course, I get herons visiting, not just to eat fish, but to eat frogs too. I don’t think they’d draw the line at the occasional small grass snake – which also frequent my pond.
Another weakness of the book is its denigration of the formal pond. Now a formal pond can be bare and stark, perhaps fitted only for Versailles, but they don’t have to be. It just happens that the best way to construct and maintain a good pond is to construct it on formal lines, and then allow the plants to grow well and spread over its margins. One of the illustrations in the back has a pond with the butyl-lining showing, weighed down by a few roots. This will last about five minutes once the sun gets to work. When using liners of any kind make sure the pond margins shield it completely from the sun. I once did a big square pond lined with 1500 gauge polythene, and twenty-five years later it was still going strong – and packed with fish and a varied wildlife. As I have said in the past, fish and other wild creatures are not naturally exclusive except in the minds of those PC biologists. If anyone would like to learn of basically simple ways to produce a garden fishpond, then let our editor know and I’ll deal with it in a future article.
Lobbying for Angling in the Olympics
There was a letter in the press a while ago suggesting that we should lobby for angling in the Olympics because it deserves to be there. Well, he’s right on the second point, at least, but lobbying for this would be a total and utter waste of time. Of course, pendulum casting a heavy sea weight is not a lot different from throwing the so-called hammer, and is a damn sight more athletic than some of the ‘sports’ in the Olympics, but the people who decide these things are quite opposed to the recognition of angling in any form, anywhere, so we really would be wasting our time.
In Angler’s Mail recently I read an interview with the former carp record holder, Lee Jackson, and I found it rather sad to be honest, as a previous record holder myself (zander). Lee was asked “..how can carp fishing still be fun? after catching the record.” He replied, “it was difficult to motivate myself to get interested in any other venues or carp after catching Two Tone at a record weight.”
After saying that the friends and camaraderie at Conningbrook were fantastic he goes on to say that he lost his way a bit and has still not really recovered. Well I hope he does. Soon. I once had a friend who went the same way after he caught a 30lb pike, moaning that he’d never get another one, never be able to better it. Does it matter? If you are fishing to enjoy yourself, whether with friends or on your own, the catch needs to be put into that perspective. If, on the other hand, you were ONLY out to break a record, then I’d advise counselling.
Spin about Banning Angling
I don’t know what it is about some people but they seem so keen on getting across a particular spin that they don’t really think things through.
A recent survey of the public, announced at the Game Fair, concluded that 84 per cent of the public feel that angling should not be banned and that ‘only’ 12 percent thought that it should. This led Mark Hudson (Country Land Owners Association President) reportedly to declare: “This shows that there is not a shred of public support to ban angling….”
Really? I suppose the 12 per cent were polled on Mars then? 12 per cent is more than a ‘shred’: it is, in fact, 7.2 million and anglers number, on similar polls, about 4 million. So we are less than a ‘shred’ then? As it happens I agree with Bruno Broughton and many other knowledgeable, experienced anglers, that angling will never be banned. It will, however, be put under pressure as the loonies try to chip away at us, looking at areas where we disagree amongst ourselves and targeting those areas. So we need to both unify and fight our position very hard.
Tim Knight of Angler’s Mail also applauded the poll results and said: “This kind of result shows angling does not have a desperate need to ally ourselves with any of the more dodgy fringe country pursuits.” He also says, “the public like us”. Well, 7 million don’t, and I can tell Tim, and Mark, that when I was a youth the parentage in favour of angling was probably 99 percent plus. It’s a bad slippage in half a century and we must take it seriously.
Returning now to Tim’s comment: is he suggesting that if things were desperate then we should align with his fringe groups? He doesn’t say who the fringe groups are, of course. Like Tim Knight I think I’m very pro Tom Legge, but one thing he has wrong in his recent letter in the press, supporting angling, is when he says “…Four million anglers? If only! Just where did this oft quoted figure come from in the first place?”
I’ll tell you Tom. It came as part of a series of surveys, which covered all manner of activities including soccer, canoeing, etc, etc. There may be nothing like 4 million regularly, active anglers, as Tom rightly says, but the figure includes occasional anglers, as it does for all sports. So the figures compare, that is the point. There’s no point in using a figure of say, 1.86 million if in debate, other sports are including people who only canoe once a decade. If you are aware of the shortcomings and advantages of statistics then you can argue your corner well enough.
Talking of canoes…
I sat on a forum at the recent Game Fair, in a debate with a leading member of the British Canoe Union (I think it was) as well as others. Bruno Broughton also sat on the forum (with his dog which nearly pulled the whole podium over!); and John Bailey chaired the debate very well. Personally, I don’t have a lot of aggro from canoe people as long as they don’t pull up and fart around in my swim.
In general I’m not sure if boats of any kind put the fish off, although the oarsmen one sometimes encounter who pull up in your swim, with literally miles of unoccupied river to choose from, are downright ignorant and arrogant. I’ve come across this not infrequently on the Cam and Great Ouse. But the difficult area in this debate was finally pinpointed and the canoe man was neatly skewered; they are not prepared to pay anything to go afloat. That’s it. That’s the very nub of the problem.
He asked, “Who would we pay a licence fee to?” Well, that’s easy. We pay ours to the Environmental Agency who use the money to try to keep our fisheries clean and improving. The canoe boys could do the same. After all, would they canoe on a river that was black and foul and festering with pollution? I asked him that but he avoided the question. Haven’t anglers cleaned up those rivers that were black and festering? Would it not be a good thing if the canoe people helped in this as a benefit to them too? No answer.
You could not really expect a non-angling canoer to know much about angling, and this man didn’t. For example, at one point he said that when the rivers were brown and full it would suit the canoes but not anglers. Try telling that to salmon, sea trout, chub or barbel anglers. One of the audience really twisted the skewer into the canoe representative by a series of careful, leading, and penetrating questions. Almost like a lawyer. It turned out she was. What is more, her face was familiar, though I couldn’t immediately place it. In discussion after the public debate I discovered she had been a Ph.D. student in my own department (Earth Sciences) some years ago now.
Good bunch these geologists you know!
