| 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. |
Personal Egos getting in the way again I’m not long back from yet another splendid trip to Egypt’s Lake Nasser – but more of that a little later. It was interesting to return to the cold after the glorious heat and sunshine of Egypt to find that nothing else has changed and that despite the enormous contribution that angling makes to the social life of this country it continues to be downgraded by just about every authoritative body. I often find myself in full agreement with Keith Arthur and his recent criticism of the BBC, the RSPB, and the RSPCA seem to me to be fully justified. These bodies are the enemies of angling and we need to fully recognise this and work out a plan of action, a way of dealing with them. It was therefore, with some disappointment that, in talking to a member of the council of FACT to hear that all the old personal ego problems are still hampering progress to unity. We need unity in angling now, and it’s about time some head were knocked together. We simply cannot go on for many more years acting defensively and failing to get our message across through a largely anti or apathetic media. Onto piking….Keith Arthur (again!) recently suggested banning freshwater deadbaits on the grounds that this was the only way to deal with fish thieves – people he believes are netting coarse fish and supplying them to the deadbait supply companies. I’m not sure this is really the case, at least on anything like a large scale. Even so, banning is not the answer in that it penalises the majority of bona fide suppliers, and anglers. The answer is to catch the villains and prosecute them. Still on piking… I saw a letter recently entitled ‘petty pike secrecy’ from someone who did not approve of pike anglers keeping quiet about where they catch their fish. Are these whingers living on our planet? This is what happens if you report a good pike or two from a named water. If the water is a good water then it will not remain so for two full seasons because the crowds will descend on it, fish it to death, crowd you out, behave badly both towards other anglers and to the pike, and then they’ll all clear off and mess up someone else’s water. That’s the truth of it Mr. Dimmock of Stourbridge, so if you want to declare your good pike waters to the travelling circus then do so. Then sit back and see what happens. That close season Every year at this time we get a muted Close Season discussion and the usual anti-Close Season views of John Williams (Birmingham Art) with which I agree; and the pro-Close Season views of Steve Pope, amongst others, with whom I disagree. Recently Steve said, “The three month break actually shows we care…” He’s thinking about showing the green welly brigade that we care. In fact, the Close Season is totally irrational, does the fish no good at all, possibly harm, and to present this as caring, to people who don’t understand it anyway, is simply deluding ourselves. The green welly brigade don’t give a fig about fish, or our Close Season; they simply want us off the waters, and if that is for three months or permanently, then that’s fine by them. There is no point at all in trying to appease them. We should only be concerned with what is best for fish and I believe it is best for fish if we have no Close Season at all. Nile Perch Everyone who has been Nile Perch fishing on Egypt’s Lake Nasser returns home in some confusion: after living a very simple life for a week or two they find themselves confused by the complexities – and some of the banalities – of living in a crowded western country. You notice it the moment you arrive back at Gatwick. From wonderful dawns and dusks, a night sky lit by stars and an unpolluted moon view, wall to wall sunshine in daytime, and hardly any people, you land to cold, noise, bustle and, of course, work. On this recent trip of mine we made it a family affair: seven of us in total, four females, three males: only two anglers, and one young girl of 11 years old, the youngest female to visit this remote environment. We were the only anglers on our part of the lake and the only other people we saw were native fishermen. We had three boats, the supply boat where we met up in camp for lunches and evening meals a Nubian guide or two on each boat, and a base camp team of Nubians, including the cooks, plus safari operator Tim Baily. Because we were not all anglers we didn’t fish all the time, at least not with the keenest of the usual visitors, but we did plenty of trolling and a little bank fishing. We did plenty of bird watching because there is a huge range of birds, relatively tame too, because humans leave them alone. One kite’s nest with young was in a bush only five feet above the ground (there are no trees!) It was a huge construction, clearly used from year to year. What really interested me though was that the lower half of the nest was sublet to house sparrows – at least six nests full of them. It is said that in the UK the decline of house sparrows is due to lack of nest sites – that is buildings and barns under the eaves of which they can assemble their mounds of grass. Well, the Nubian desert aint got no houses or buildings that they can use so they put their balls of grass in bushes – or in kite’s nests. House sparrows are very common there, and I do mean our house sparrows. Mind you I once fished a carp lake in the UK where a chicken farm was very close to the lake, and once again house sparrows had balls of grass nests in the bushes so they didn’t have to fly far to reach the grain fed to the chickens. So there must be another reason for the decline in house sparrows in the UK.
On to the fishing. The only two experienced anglers, Chris, and myself didn’t do too well. The rest of them did. I must emphasize that this was not because we spent all our time helping beginners, because we didn’t. Of course, we helped a little, and regularly, but the Nubians did most of it and we did get plenty of fishing in. I’m mentioning this deliberately because not so long ago I had a gentle go at a guy who’d caught no Nile Perch in a week’s fishing and, I only knew one other person who’d experienced that. My own personal average is around 4-5 a day. Well, it’s dropped now, I can tell you, because Chris and I only had one each. We had some nice Tiger fish as well, and it was a real pleasure to see the others catching on the same boats. We were just unlucky. I only had three Nile Perch takes in a week, and two got off. I think Chris did the same. The others – dare I say it – any number of fish over 50lbs, best 64 lbs; and the best two of 64 lbs and 58 lbs fell to a lady. There were other fish too, of 40, 30, 20 and so on. What a humiliation. We caught the lake on a slow recovery after three bad weeks caused by up and down weather. By that I don’t mean that it wasn’t wall-to-wall sunshine, because it was, but the wind and temperatures were unstable. The Nubians complain of the cold if the temperature drops to 80  When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission, which supports our community.
|
