Barrie Rickards’ Angling – Mixed Bag

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.

This article isn’t the usual list of fairy stories about pike (involving pulling in milkmaids and horses, etc) but I found the flowery language almost impenetrable in places so he could have been saying anything. It occurs to me that it would be far better if pike anglers themselves wrote features outside the usual angling mags. This would at least ensure that the readers were informed without sensation. Of course, that in itself might not appeal to some editors. However, the strangest thing about this particular article was the huge illustrations that accompanied it. It looked like an airbrushed preparation and it looked more like a great lake trout of some kind than a pike! You would have thought that with millions of good pike pics available they might have used one. A subsequent letter by the author of the article confirmed that the fish was, indeed, a great lake trout!

Anglers and the Honours List
We’ve all had our usual whinge about the Honours list failing to honour anglers like John Wilson and Bob Nudd, as it surely should. Keith Arthur, though, was more positive in his comments and he pointed out that people need to be nominated, by someone else not by themselves (though it does happen, amazingly). You need a form, and you get it from Ceremonial Secretariat, Cabinet Office, 35 Great Smith Street, London SW1P 3BP. My investigations reveal that there is a little bit more to it than that. One person recommending another will not get far, even though that person is quite famous and deserving in our eyes. You need half a dozen people to nominate the same person. And, for angling, therein lies a problem. It is absolutely critical that the fact that someone has been nominated should not leak out. If it does so the nomination is immediately invalidated. Now, can you imagine half a dozen anglers keeping quiet about anything? I can’t. But it’s the only way, I’m afraid. And it’s a help is some of the half dozen have a little clout or standing themselves.

Predatory Tench
Angling is a funny old game. I remember the time we spent back in the 1950s and 1960s trying to catch 5lb tench: not 6lb fish mark you, but 5lbs. Hardly any 6lb fish were caught in a season. Then, a couple of days ago, I was lure fishing on a fenland drain, using a Storm minnow, multicoloured, six inches long, when I had one almighty take under the rod tip. You’ve guessed it. A six-pound plus tench! Tench are to some degree predatory of course, and on this very water, a couple of years back, I had several 8lb fish chasing my rubber jigs – but they didn’t take on that occasion.

Yet another false cruelty allegation – is something sinister going on?
No doubt you have seen the reports in the national newspapers about how a team from the University of Belfast has proved that angling is cruel! They did this by showing that tank fish learn to beware of electric shocks emanating from one area of their tank. That proves that angling is cruel!

It hasn’t occurred to the lady scientists in question that anglers, actually, don’t use electricity to catch their fish. In fact the relationship between fish and electricity is quite complex and varied. Some predatory species use a powerful dose of electricity to kill or stun their prey. So there’s a good chance that many fish have an inbuilt genetic protection that warns them about electric shocks. Yet another fish uses small scale electric currents to detect their food, or they pick up tiny electric currents emanating from that food. Furthermore, anyone who has been involved with electro fishing knows that the precise amount of electric current is crucial: too much and the fish’s spine can be damaged or the fish killed outright; even if the current is slightly wrong spinal problems can occur; if it is correct, the fish is stunned and recovers.

Some fish, like pike, will do all they can to avoid going between the electrodes and I have seen them hitting full tilt the narrow strip of water between an electrode and the bank. Tench try to go under the electric field, and it is noticeable that in some waters the presence of tench may be quite undetected by electro fishing. All in all there is good reason to expect that fish both use and are cautious of electric currents, especially if, in the second case, they stem from sources other than themselves or their food supply. And, what is much more important, none of this, or the work from Belfast, proves that the fish feel pain. And it is that last fallacious argument that the Belfast people try to use to prove that fish feel pain.

However, there’s yet another odd slant to their work. It is one thing to try to prove, as no one yet has, that fish feel pain. That, one could argue, is a reasonable scientific objective. But then to immediately pursue anglers, who are NOT using electric shocks (unlike the researchers), smacks of social manipulation or social interference and this is really unrelated to the work they are supposed to be doing. It would be much easier to argue, from their results, that they were being cruel to fish, surely. And there’s a band-wagoning factor here too. Last year we had the bee-sting brigade from one of the Scottish Universities having a go at angling and now we have another lot. Is this really objective science with a valid goal? Or is something else going on?

Support the SAA
If any of you have had doubts about supporting the Specialist Anglers Alliance (SAA) then some of their recent achievements may have helped to change your mind in a positive fashion. The SAA recently took the lead into an investigation into fish welfare and this has resulted in the Fish Welfare Group, which has on board just about every angling organisation you could think of. I suggest that you join the SAA as an individual member. At £ 10 p.a. it is extremely good value and you will soon find out what is going on in angling and where it’s going on, often long before anglers in general know about it. The Fish Welfare Group has a whole series of objectives, mostly attainable objectives I might add, such as the accreditation of fisheries, licensing of fish suppliers and transporters, effective bailiffing, monitoring of animal welfare issues and bills, encouraging professional qualifications in fisheries managers, wider distribution of the Code of Practise (another SAA brainchild which has worked well), and to encourage research in matters such as eels, topmouth gudgeon, barbel handling and, disposal of pond/tank fish. The SAA is an innovative leader in angling. It ain’t perfect, because it needs more of you.

Those Oz 50’s really are 50-pounders
I’m looking forward to seeing if these Australian 50 lb-plus carp actually weigh that much! I do not think importing them is a good idea I hasten to add; but a number of anglers do not believe in Oz fifty pounders. I have seen pics in Oz, shown me by keen carp anglers who returned their fish, and believe me they were fifties.

Get ahead with a mackerel head
I was slightly surprised to read recently that Gordon Burton hooks mackerel heads through the eyes and shoulder to get distance. Like him I find mackerel heads cast well, but they cast quite a lot better if you put one treble through both lips, not the eyes. The second treble can be on the flanks, as Gordon says. Mackerel heads are one of the best pike baits available and it always puzzles me when pikers reject them in favour of trails. As a rule mackerel heads do cast further.

SSSI are expensive, antisocial and unnecessary
I see Keith Arthur has been having a go at SSSI. You might expect that, as a scientist, I’d be in favour of Sites of Special Scientific Interest. Not a bit of it. I’m opposed to them because they are often badly protected when set up and many people are prohibited from enjoying them, especially anglers. In today’s enlightened environment with respect to ecosystems, SSSIs are unnecessary and costly, as well as being antisocial generally.

F2 carp – why do we need them?
Finally, I think, F2 carp! The debate about them is raging. I tend to side with the conservatives like Des Taylor who wonders why on earth do we need them? If I was 100% sure of their health safety check – and I appreciate that the developers have done all they can and more – I’d be a little happier, maybe in the sense that I wouldn’t have to fish for them if I didn’t want to; and others could if they did want to.

PS – it’s surreal!
As a postscript, I’ve been listening to Tony Robinson interviewed on Radio 4. He said politics was like being Treasurer of the local fishing club. Makes you think. I’ve just remembered – the new in-word, emanating as always from Estuary English, is ‘surreal’. You’ll see it soon attached to a big carp, I’m sure. Or has there been one already?