| 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. |
Gags and Deep Hooking
Two related matters come up in pike angling from time to time, namely the use of gags (to unhook pike) and the question of deep hooking. The first is under debate at the moment and I’d be interested to hear your views. Personally I haven’t used a gag in any form since about 1955 when I invented the unhooking method most of us use today. I gave it a lot of publicity in the early 1960s, through teach-ins, and I tried to show that a gag was inefficient and completely unnecessary. However, I never argued that it was ‘barbaric’, which seems to be a widespread feeling. To be quite honest I cannot see that much difference between sticking a treble in a pikes jaw and using a gag! Especially as most gags now have protected ‘points’ rather than the old V-points. Not all pike fishermen belong to pike clubs or to clubs informed about pike handling. For those people a gag gives them a little bit of confidence, and providing they do not use them on undersized fish they probably do little harm and may actually protect pike stocks overall. It seems to me that we need to educate pikers away from use of gags. At some stage sales of gags would decline to a point at which firms would find them uneconomical to sell. I suppose what I’m saying is that we are probably making a fuss about nothing. What will these inexperienced or new pikers do if there is no gag available? It would be nice if they all joined the PAC or Scottish PAC of course, but will they?
The question of deep-hooking and the damage it can cause has always been with us, and I think the approaches taken by most writers is correct – do everything you can to avoid it. If the worst happens and hooks are left in a fish, what are the consequences? I frequently read of dead pike being found that have had a big treble in their throats. I once found one myself, when I was fishing with Ray Webb many years ago. I don’t think these pike starve to death, as so many anglers seem to think. I think they die quickly because the hook enters the heart of the fish. A hook in the throat would not be enough to stop pike feeding comfortably. Think about it like this: I once caught a 14lb pike that had a 5lb plus pike down its throat, and it was in the process of swallowing my large mackerel bait. Similarly I had a very big fish a couple of winters back that had its throat stuffed up with three fish – a 4lbish pike, an eel, and (possibly) a trout. Yet it still took my large pollan! I think it is even more unusual for a pike to die from a stitched up throat than it is for one to have a hook stuck in its heart (barbless hooks excepted, because I think these are dangerous, especially now pikers are going bigger than size 8 and 6).
Hooks in a pike’s stomach have never really been a problem, provided they are not galvanised or stainless steel. Bait fishermen really should avoid these hooks and stick to good old easy to rust types. The hydrochloric acid in a pike’s stomach dissolves these quite easily. Of course, all these matters are academic if you avoid deep hooking in the first place, which most experienced anglers do, most of the time.
Angling On Terrestrial TV
I see there is yet another campaign to get angling on to terrestrial TV, especially the BBC, this time led by Angling Times. Their case is very strong, of course, but the BBC will ignore them for the reasons I stated in my Chattering Classes article, Angling is not reality to them and until there is a great deal of celebrity pressure nothing will happen. There really can be no doubt that the BBC is not simply neutral to angling, it is opposed to it as an organisation. Keith Arthur, writing recently of his own experiences with the BBC, pointed out that they seemed to be dead set against country sports, full stop. I’m sure that is right. Personally, I think the BBC is past its sell by date and ought not to survive when its charter comes up for renewal. Not dissimilar reasons to the BBC’s attitude to angling is also why we do not get the national honours we deserve, the lottery funding we deserve, the Sports Personality of the Year coverage we deserve, and why angling is not an Olympic sport. I have argued for years that we need to acknowledge the position the sport is in, and set to counteract it by our own actions.
The Question of the Sea Angler’s Licence
This question of the sea anglers’ licence-to-be is a tricky one. On balance – and it is only on balance – it doesn’t seem a bad idea and I go along with Alan Yates that in the long term it may benefit sea anglers. But I have a suspicious mind, and I wonder, why now? After, all, with the sea stocks at an all time low and being plundered dreadfully by EU boats, mostly from Spain, the sea angler is getting less and less for the money. Traditionally, the seashore and the sea generally has been not so much no man’s land as every man’s land. Given the nature of access and common rights on most of our seashore I should think the government could face a legal challenge on charging for what must be protected by common law. Are the proposed charges really being put there to help sea anglers or are they simply a way of conning £ 20 million out of anglers – assuming one million sea anglers will pay £ 20 each. What of families on holiday, and crab lines, and people in rock pools after blennies? Has someone thought this through yet or it is it just another Labour Party off-the-cuff law-cum-restriction? Freshwater anglers may be saying “About time too”, but is that really fair when the circumstances are quite different? Let us hope that if they do this they do it properly, think it out in detail and ensure that the benefits going to sea angling. Personally, I think some politicians see a way of restricting sea anglers. It should be said loud and clear that, in general, sea anglers do not endanger sea stocks, because they catch such a tiny proportion of them. There have been exceptions, in the past, but these have been solved now, such as the bass crisis.
Angler’s Mail Booklet
I’ve just been browsing through an Angler’s Mail leaflet – cum – booklet on ‘How to Coarse Fish’. It’s a really good effort by and large. Its knot’s section is useful for me because when I do want to use something other than a blood knot, I can’t remember how to do it, but why no blood knot? It is still the best all-round knot in my experience. There are other pitfalls in this book. For example, the deadbait laying-on rig for pike is shown without an upper trace, but flip-backs in deadbait fishing are not uncommon and an upper trace cuts this out completely, and isn’t the feeder rig shown a tether rig? It’s actually a bolt rig too, though I doubt if the average matchman would agree with that. Surely a tether rig is unnecessary today? Unlike many angling publications Angler’s Mail gets the scientific names of fish spelt correctly, and then spoils it by calling them “Latin names”. They are not. They are scientific names, using a dead language as a root, and that dead language can be Latin, but it can also be, and often is, Greek or Anglo Saxon.
