One of the very worst aspects of getting older is that your views and opinions will – by default –come to be seen as outdated, ’old hat’… and this is the natural order of things that keeps humanity going ever-forward to explore new possibilities. But sadly, ‘progress’ is a subjective term which I’m yet to see adequately defined. To my mind ‘progress’ is contingent on it having a truly beneficial effect; but for others ‘progress’ is merely a development, an expansion of an idea regardless of its influence on human happiness. An accurate example of true progress might be seen in the Paralympics: how can it not be good, right and progressive to recognise the skills and abilities of people who are otherwise disabled. Other good examples might be catalytic converters on car engines; advanced surgery techniques; recycling…there are just too many examples to cite.
But in fishing terms can, say, electronic bite alarms be classified as truly progressive? There’s not the slightest chance of their manufacture and use ever being stopped, curbed or widely discouraged, and I certainly don’t seek to advocate their abandonment – I’ve used them for long enough! I merely question if the modern angler’s dependency on an electronic form of alert is – at the very end of the day – beneficial…’progressive’.
The quality and efficacy of today’s alarms is remarkable to say the least; they’re near-perfect in their reliability, design, robustness and value for money, and when it comes to fish on the bank (carp, mainly) there can be no question as to their worth. For irrefutable justification, think no further than that ultra-tough water where you’re lucky to get a run per day – or even per week. Many of us will have fished such places and have been grateful beyond words for that little black box’s timely alert! Without the aid of technology we’d have missed that ONE take and that ONE cracking specimen that made the exercise worthwhile. It might be said then that bite alarms should, really, be reserved for such heart-break venues; places where it would be truly unreasonable to expect an angler – a human being – to remain unstintingly attentive.
So what of those many other carp waters where ‘takes’ are not so rare? The sorts of places where you can reasonably expect a butt-ringer two or three times per day or night? Why would you need an electronic device to tell you when to reel-in your quarry? The answer is obvious, of course: it’s to wake you up! And unless you’re near-narcoleptic like me it’ll do an unquestionably fantastic job of helping you put a fish on the bank.
When the morning comes and you reflect on the night’s events you’ll have no doubt about technology’s worth… but forever after you’ll have no more than mental snapshots of your 4am conquest. There will be no ‘memories’; no indelible stories in your head; little worth re-telling – just a disjointed collage of bending rod, a torch-lit weigh-net and the fish’s return. There will be little or nothing in the way of narrative, a story which tells of dark hours spent sentinel by your rods, keeping watch in the margins for dark, oily disturbances. Your story will be over in seconds; you’ll have nothing to warrant an appreciative pint from your listener and far fewer, precious memories to take with you through life.
I find that the focus of my thoughts here has changed! It’s not so much the bite alarms, is it! It’s more about sleeping on the job! There’s actually not much wrong about bite alarms per se because they enable the angler to take in his beautiful surroundings – day and night – and fish effectively, and that, I suppose, is why I’ve used everything from the Heron to the Delkim over the years.
Yes…it’s being comatose while the carp-traps do their business out there, unseen and unloved. Come to think of it, this is what the pope’s been banging-on about just recently, isn’t it? His recent ‘encyclical’ broaches the perils of over-reliance on technology – and they don’t come more spiritual than him! He makes the point that social media is de-valuing the true meaning of friendship and that one’s ability to, say, ‘delete’ a former cyber-pal is desensitizing people – the younger generation in particular. Well I certainly don’t want to go too far down that road just now and I’m sure our carp fishing methods aren’t going to have Earth-shattering consequences, but I do see something of an analogy between his concerns and the disconnect brought about by buzzer-assisted kipping: you’ll get the mug-shots but far less to tell your grandchildren.
Cliff Hatton
