Lies, Damned Lies and Fisherman’s Tales

Nice tench for Stu – all 9lb of it……..

Benjamin Disraeli once said ‘There are three kinds of lies:

‘Lies, damned lies and statistics’.

An anonymous quote once said that 87% of statistics are made up.

Or as The angler’s prayer says:

Lord, suffer me to catch a fish,
So large that even I,
When talking of it afterwards,
May have no need to lie.

And finally an old saying “Is it that all anglers are liars or is it that all the liars fish?”

Is it cobblers?

So is this all complete cobblers? Are we really as pure as the driven snow and so truthful that not even a tiny white lie could pass our lips? Is it the complete opposite, and ought Disraeli have included fishermen’s tales? Or is this something where you have to get to know your fellow anglers sufficiently well to sort the wheat from the chaff, the mainly truthful ones from the out and out fantasists? Does anyone really care? I shall tread carefully with my tales for the laws of libel reach far but I’m sure these true examples will draw a smile.

There are many reasons for stretching the truth in angling. Most are harmless, though obtaining money or prizes is outright fraud. Guessing the weights of reasonable sized fish harms no one, and you can easily be out either way. Getting over the disappointment of losing a fish it is tempting to stretch the truth and claim it as some tremendous monster rather than admit failings in your own ability or tackle. Keeping quiet about where exactly the big fish are showing, or even not admitting what you’ve caught when asked is a much more valid reason for a white lie.

Failing memory

Another common human failing is the frailty of memory over the years causing catches to grow with the retelling. I have kept my own angling diaries for over thirty years and without them I’m sure that it would be easy to forget exact details and dates of past catches. This has been invaluable when trying to make sense of cycles in fish populations and stockings of fish. Relying on memory alone foreshortens the passing years alarmingly as well as increasing the weights.

The big problem begins when you start to believe your own lies so as to keep up the image until the lies take over as the web of fantasy grows. If your angling friends were impressed by a brace of six pound chub last time then this time around it had better be two sixes and a seven. Eventually things get so out of hand that the whole house of cards comes tumbling down when you are exposed as a brazen liar with the consequence that even claiming a brace of gudgeon is regarded as dubious.

Pye’s porkies – allegedly, and Whitehall’s whoppers

Once the curse of fame and fortune become involved things become much more murky. It has been claimed that famous pike angler Dennis Pye felt obliged to keep the news of his success coming, and resorted to embellishing his catches until in the end it was impossible to tell the truth from the legend. The Whitehall pike (a claimed and accepted record of over 40lbs) was an altogether different matter when a 30lb+ pike left for stuffing was ‘discarded due to drying out badly’ only to reappear as a new record fish several months later. Diligent enquiries by Martin Gay enabled him to identify the fish using the pike’s unique markings as the one caught by another angler at the lesser weight.

Rule bending

Match fishing endures cheating rather than outright lying, with all manner of dodgy drawing, pegging, weighing-in and rule-bending. Recently I obtained a club rulebook from 1954. In it the scalesman was entitled to cut open fish to check for hidden weights! This was in the days of retaining fish.

Sowing the seeds of deceit

Of course the big change in the last twenty years has been rewarding the captor of specimen fish with money prizes. Our most successful specimen hunters are closely monitored and it is fair to say their integrity is impeccable. Their catches are stupendous and yet well witnessed and superbly photographed. I take my hat off to their skill and dedication.

It is the desire to try to keep up with these exceptional anglers that sows the seeds of deceit. But in those same weekly papers that show these fantastic catches appear some of the most dubious stories of catches. It is noticeable that awards are not made to the more dubious claims, and sometimes it is stated that so-and-so claimed to have caught such-and-such a fish. One very experienced journalist told me that as many as a third of big fish reports during the summer are treated with at least a degree of suspicion, not that all of these make it into print.

Half a pound to make it look real

Have you ever noticed that the most dubious catches always seem to have a weight with a half pound in it? My theory is that the weight was almost certainly guessed. The photo is blurred with no sense of scale, or if it does the measurement doesn’t add up. The claimed six and half pound chub that only appears to be twenty inches long and not especially deep. The most astonishing was for a gudgeon claimed to be ten ounces. The actual measurements were given and using elementary volume calculations it could be shown that the fish might only weigh two ounces at most – fish have about the same density as water i.e. 1 gram per cc. This tale quickly fizzled out and no record claim was submitted. Other errors include misreading the number of revolutions on Avon scales, and for the determined cheat putting a 40lb dial on 32lb scales.

And now, nothing but the truth……

Back to lying. Adolf Hitler realised that the bigger the lie the more chance that it would succeed, and so I’m going to give some true examples of fishy tales that I’ve encountered over the years. No names, not many clues, nothing but the truth.

As a youngster I fished matches on a small clay pit containing only stunted roach and gudgeon. When the post of match secretary became vacant one man was keen to take on the job, and we soon found out why. I drew a swim opposite him across a small bay, perhaps twenty yards away. Mid-match he swung in a six-ounce roach. It was his only fish. At the end he weighed himself in without any witnesses although I saw him lift his keepnet with the solitary roach. He claimed a two-pound roach together with a similar tench to win the match by a mile. I was only thirteen so who’d believe me at the time. But others also had their doubts so it was only a matter of time before he was caught out and he left the club soon after. The water never has produced a two-pound roach.

Years later on a match on the Dorset Stour one angler was doing well, but as ever he’d always claim that a big one had got away. But this time he got completely carried away by claiming to have lost a roach of over five pounds. More than twenty anglers heard him make this claim and it took several minutes before the assembled anglers could regain their power of speech such were the hysterics that this caused.

Another angler started claiming some exceptional tench from a well known gravel-pit. Unfortunately the witnesses were usually passers-by with little experience of angling or the correct way to weigh a specimen fish, although a number of well-known specimen hunters were present. Discussing this with them we decided to set a trap. Realising that the angler would not recognise me as an angler I was despatched to witness the landing of a tench whilst pretending to be a bird watcher. It quickly became obvious how the tench were gaining weight. The scales had been wound on nearly a pound and the weight of the weigh-net was not deducted so the fish gained two pounds each time.

One angler would not only brag about stupendous catches every week in the tackle shop but also expect us to tell him where the latest hotspots were. Realising that he was as gullible as he expected us to be in believing his tall tales we hatched a plot. Our tall stories of big bags of roach were easily swallowed, as he got sent on some long walks to far-flung swims that had rarely been fished. Cruel perhaps, but it silenced his exaggerated yarns.

Sometimes the boot is well and truly on the other foot. Back in Jan 2002 I arrived on my local river for an evening session after roach. In the twilight an angler was weighing a 2-5 roach. Next cast he hit a monster on roach gear. After a long fight that kept all of us mystified as to its identity he netted it. A 17-10 Grass carp. Well witnessed, weighed and photographed. A week later, talking to a local angler. “What’s this bulls**t about a grass carp?” Honestly you can’t win sometimes.

Finally, back to that brace of gudgeon I had last week. Well, one was nearly five pounds and the other just over four, and boy did they fight, and as for the one that got away…….