Barrie Rickards' Angling – Williams Vs 'Tench'

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.

The Mark Williams and Prof Tench Debate

I THOUGHT THE discussion between Mark Williams (‘Opinion Piece – Shouting into a Vacuum’) and Prof Tench (‘Opinion Piece – We’ve never had it so Good’) was really good (but why do some people on websites not use a real name?). I tend to go along with a great deal of what PT says. In many ways we really have never had it so good, yet there are still dangers to angling, and as I have argued before, I think the greatest damage is the effect these niggling issues (antis, sections of the BBC etc) can or could have on the class of people who really determine what happens in this country. We need to counteract the stories put about by these against angling before the one-sided picture sways too many people. It’s perhaps easier for me to go through PT’s points and comment upon them where I think I have something to add.

It is true that the freedom of specialist anglers is now greater than in the past, except that in the past one could do whatever one liked anyway because no one gave a hoot. There has been an increase in restrictive regulations, witness the retrograde activities recently of the Scottish MPs.

I think PT is correct in his overview of pollution. Even so, it is the case that even as early as the 1990s the Environment Agency bodies on which I sat were concerned that the rivers were “too clean”. There are two main reasons for this (apart from the decrease in various kinds of pollution). One is the drainage policies that sweep most of the useful water out to sea, so that low, slow flows are the norm between sudden and very fast, flood-causing surges. The second is only recently being appreciated, namely that the “too clean” rivers actually carry a great deal of sex-changing chemicals.

PT goes into the formation of the EA very well, but it cannot really be denied that prior to the formation of the EA the Water Authorities could hardly prosecute themselves for polluting, but others, including the ACA primarily, did so. River pollutions do attract media attention, in fact, and several cases have been highlighted on TV news bulletins during the last year. Maybe everybody is getting more environmentally aware.

I don’t think myself that anything arriving from Brussels has been designed to improve our aquatic habitat, and I reckon, unlike PT, that it would have been a lot safer in the hands of Margaret Thatcher et al. We’ll just have to differ on that one. At some point, PT mentions acid rain and blames UK’s heavy industry. In fact, as it was later shown, the real cause of acid rain was the filthy lower Rhine and what it gave to the atmosphere in its lower, estuarine reaches. The UK was blamed initially, naturally, so on pollution maybe Mark Williams is nearer the mark – for me anyway. I do agree with PT however, about public utilities today, they could have been run properly, but we needed the Thatcher years to show us how. (We don’t learn though do we: look at the NHS). Surely PT, the EA was an improvement in almost all respects on the National River Authorities? Certainly working with the EA is a deal easier and many of their objectives are sounder.

Whenever one discusses agricultural pollutants I have to remind myself that one of the best fishing waters I have ever experienced had the highest possible levels of agriculture pollutants. The appropriate NRA region did analyses for me and even they were staggered at the results. Then I told them how good the fishing was. Since the fertilisation was reduced the fishing has declined, although the black plague arrived at the same time so they just might have had something to do with it.

Water meadows are natural systems really, in that they occur where man hasn’t drained them. They may not be meadows in the sense of summer cattle and winter wetland, but they do occur naturally. Of course, we have influenced adversely the hill drainage of bogs and the like so there is undoubtedly a man made component of water meadows wherever they occur, but they could be put back in place and they would improve the water system by their presence. We are agreed on the subject of slash and burn engineers: but they are a slowly dying breed and the new younger people in the EA may eventually lead us the right way. Mind you, having said that, two documents I have recently read, (one from government, and one from FACT, the RSPB, WWF, WWT, etc) make no mention of the real villain in our waterways which is the bad drainage practices of the slash and burn drainage engineers. There are ways of reversing the damage, but it’ll take time – and no politician has time. That’s why no politician has head on tackled the issue and everyone else skirts around it.

It wasn’t anecdotal evidence, by the way, that the Relief Channel lost its fish to the sea. It was observed, furthermore, when Colin Clare and I, through our consultative, brought the issue to the then NRA; they almost laughed, but agreed to do tests. The tests showed conclusively that the fish could not cope with the water flows involved, and could easily be swept out to sea. They apologised for their scepticism and put in place attempts to stop it. So some science is worth waiting for PT. I still fish the fens, and love doing so, but the predator fishing ain’t what it was and the answer is probably in the last sentence of PT’s paragraph entitled “Habitat Improvement to improve fry recruitment”.

I don’t have a problem with PT’s views on angling bodies. Things are improving slowly, as is FACT, so we will get there, but if you’ve been involved for fifty years the slowness is an irritant (and it shows that you failed in all your earlier efforts). The angling bodies will certainly encourage scientific research and provided this is not some of the half baked lab based science that we read about these days I reckon we’ll only benefit in the long run. Anglers do have a big input to make into any scientific work on fish, partly because plenty of anglers are scientists and visa versa so a case of bad logic can be spotted a mile away. So by one means or another our scientific knowledge of fish will improve, to the benefit of angling.

Pain and Cruelty

I’ve said enough on this in the past, but I do agree with PT’s analysis of Alexander Schwab’s rationale. I don’t think it was as bad as PT says, but it is certainly flawed and incomplete, as I think I said when I reviewed the book, and yes, I’m with him almost all the way on the RSPB. As it happens I think the workhorse RSPB man on the grounds is far, far better than those running the organisation. I even know some people working for the RSPB who are not members of the organisation in a personal sense, because they think their bosses are mad. I’m glad PT mentioned that controlled ponds programme because, as he says, it really did show what damage cormorants are doing and had already done.

There is a risk, as PT rightly says, of anglers operating a self-fulfilling “tide of paranoia”, but I see it as simply being aware of where the dangers lie. These change by the month, of course, and I’m sure PT is right in saying that the sabs will find more interesting targets, but they have targeted anglers nonetheless and, in my view, increasingly, at least until recently.

I rather lost the sense of PT’s thoughts on global warming so I’ll just put in my pennyworth. Any geologist will tell you that the latest phase of global warming began around 15,000 years ago (the UK north of the Thames was still covered by Kilometres of ice – or do I mean miles – as late as 10,000 years ago. None of this has to do with humans. The only debate is whether or not we are adding to it now, and I know some very serious and good scientists who think we are not (of course, they don’t get research grants!).

The BBC

Of course the BBC has done some angling programmes, more recently of the type that have some kind of gimmick that they feel might have wider appeal (“Accidental Angler” for example) but it is how it responds to criticism which betrays how it really feels about angling. The responses are always misguided, misinformed and totally lacking in any sympathy for angling as a valid sport. Anti-angling sentiment amongst the middle classes is really quite common. I speak from my own experiences of working with them. It’s on the increase, fed by the drip drip of anti angling rubbish pedalled by extremists. They tend only to hear one side of the argument (I’ve been on radio programmes where the editor simply refused to allow the angler to question a statement made by the anti-angler. BBC, of course. The various opinion polls really do prove my case, in the 1950s at least 90% of the public would be in favour of angling now it’s down to 70%. In the end angling will survive, and survive well, constrained more than I’d like in some quarters perhaps, so it has a good future, but we must fight our corner and remain quite vigilant, perhaps going on the attack more than we have done in the past, highlighted the positive ventures in which angling is always involved (Les Webber, Dace, etc, etc.).

Finally, I’m less pessimistic than PT who seems to think angling has lost its way. Anglers are unsporting, or not, not the baitboats they may use, or not, in my case. On 14 March this year I lounged by the river, in the sun, with very advanced tackle, fishing in a way that I knew might get me a nice pike or two. I watched a roe deer feeding not a couple of hundred yards away. I chatted to a jenny wren, and watched pied wagtails leaping about one of my rods (they kept pecking the butt ring) and watched kingfishers 200m under my rested rods. They were there because we anglers have made an environment that suits them. All this is to do with angling to me, as much as the big pike which I do catch, and it will all be there long after the plonkers have gone. Even so, I have evolved eyes in the back of my head, and I intend to keep them open.

Canoes Again

It’s interesting how this problem of canoes rears it head at regular intervals. They are a persistent lot I’ll say that. There was a letter recently in Angling Times from Chloe Nelso-Lawrie PR and marketing manager of the British Canoe Union. Her case is as bad, if not worse, than that presented by her President a couple of years ago. She says of anglers “…both bodies should work together to promote healthy enjoyment of our aquatic environment.” Really! Anglers are the cause of the healthy aquatic environment we have in this country and, what is more, they have paid, and do pay, huge sums of money to keep the aquatic environment healthy and to improve that environment. Much of this is done through the Environment Agency (at least, it is in recent times). How much effort and money has the BCU put into this? Are we going to get an answer to that question Chloe Nelso-Lawrie, or are you, like your President before you, simply going to wriggle away somewhere? I personally have no problem with canoes being on most of my waters, providing they pay the EA, as individual members, a sum of money at least equal to that paid by anglers to the EA, and by angling clubs to riparian owners, and most certainly, canoes should not be on the rivers during the fish breeding seasons. Remember too, canoes cause a great deal more disturbance to wild life, including aquatic birds than do anglers. So they should keep off the game rivers during the winter and the coarse rivers during the spring (and any other time that the fish are spawning). Above all, they should put their money where theirs mouths are, or shut up. I suppose the BCU is frightened to inform its members that they’ll have to pay an extra £ 30-£ 100 p.a. just to be there. Anglers do not suggest, Chloe Nelso-Lawrie, that “…canoeists advocate disturbing spawning beds…” The fact is that you do so if you go afloat during the spawning periods. If the latter is what you want to do then you can hardly complain if anglers think you advocate that.

“The BCU wishes to work in partnership with all fellow river users to ensure the environment is preserved and used appropriately by the British public.” We don’t need to the BCU to preserve the environment: anglers have been doing this, and improving it, for 200 years. Why don’t you take your canoes to some foetid, stinking, polluted waterway and improve that? Come to think of it, where were you during the last 200 years when such waters needed help? The British public, in the form of walkers, dog walkers, cyclists and others already enjoy, on a day-to-day basis, what anglers have created over many decades. Just what have the BCU to offer? They are not offering hands on work or cash? All they are offering is a foot in the door of a house someone else has built. They didn’t want to know when it was a slum, but now it’s a mews establishment they can’t keep away. The letter by the PR woman for BCU is grossly hypocritical. I’ll say to them once again: stump up serious funding, and make amends big time for your lack of involvement for 200 years, and we might listen sympathetically, but your track record is bad, as I outlined above, and I have no doubt at all that you want in without payment.

That Giant Pike

The photograph of a giant pike, in Angling Times 20 March, has certainly provoked some interest. It looks absolutely genuine, but the weight is exceedingly difficult to guess at. Of course you can do things with photographs these days which would make detection of the trickery quite impossible, what is most convincing is the size of the hands (left hand holding the fish), but even so, you could relocate a not-quite-so-big fish on the photographs, or use the same fish slightly enlarged, but perhaps it has been reported fully elsewhere (Holland?) and one presumes there is a witness – the cameraman, because this isn’t a pose where you could snap yourself. The two pictures used are fantastic, but why is the left eye of the pike blind in one picture, but not in the other (they are undoubtedly pics of the same fish as you can see from the spot patterns). Another interesting thing is the picture of the fish supposedly engulfing a double – holding it crosswise in its jaws – the two bones that flank the anterior part of the upper jaw, of both prey and predator, are strangely flared. I have never seen this when a pike has gripped another pike, and such aggressive behaviour I have seen several times in my piking, usually involving a big double or a twenty getting hold of another sizeable pike, even one of the same size. However, most of the instances I have personally witnessed have been when the prey fish has been on its side. In this case the prey fish is still in the upright position. This is unusual but may explain the strange flaring of the marginal upper jawbones. Perhaps this story will run a bit yet and we may well learn the full story. Odd, though, that if it is so big that in all this time the story hasn’t fully surfaced.