Opinion Piece – Bizarre Broadside

Opinion Piece – Bizarre Broadside

The elementary first: Professor Tench states that Hook, Line and Thinker (HL&T) is a

“Hopelessly flawed attempt to provide a rational defence for angling”

and, such an attempt demonstrates in Prof Tench’s words:

“crass stupidity”

On the cover jacket of HL&T it is clearly stated what the book is all about:

“Anglers feel instinctively that their sport is not cruel. This book explains why their instincts are right – and exposes the confused philosophy of their accusers.”

Hook, Line and Thinker is not making an ethical case for angling but against the specious ideas of the antis. I don’t know of any one reader or reviewer who has missed that central point. But there is always the ingenious fool… Prof Tench again:

“…he even fails to persuade himself that catch and release is acceptable…”

There is an entire chapter in HL&T dealing with catch and release (pages 169 – 178) and it contains an unequivocal answer to the question whether it’s a good thing. That answer is yes. Undeterred by the facts, Prof Tench carries on:

“Talk about out of touch, catch and release is the enlightened approach to fishing everywhere in the western world, we are not starving Neanderthal fishmongers who need to catch fish to eat, we fish because we enjoy it, so if you can return a fish and it then gives another angler the pleasure of catching it where’s the harm?”

That clearly makes me a Neanderthal man. At least partially. But there are more serious matters hiding in these few lines. Catch and release is not the enlightened approach to fishing everywhere in the western world. In Germany catch and release as practiced in carp fishing is an offence punishable by law. The reasoning behind the law is that catch and release causes unnecessary suffering to the fish. Never mind the question whether they suffer or not: such is the law in Germany. Why bother? Germany is another country! Of course, Prof Tench could argue if he so chooses that Germany does not belong to the western world or even that it is the home of the Neanderthal man, but I don’t think it is wise to dismiss international ideas and the progress of the animal rights movement. The draft of that wounded-but-not-yet-dead European Constitution has a clause in it taking into consideration the rights of animals as ‘sentient beings.’ “Sentient beings’ might not sound much of a threat to angling.

But closer to home there is a group of scientists working with Felicity Huntingford and Lynn Sneddon who, like the German law makers, also think that catch and release is not such a great idea for sentient beings and they could give Prof Tench chapter and verse on his “where is the harm?” Furthermore their research focus is on pain perception in fish, the very area which Prof Tench claims to be “facile” and “counter-intuitive”. The work of Huntingford, Sneddon and their colleagues claims to prove that fish feel pain. Their findings are cited in German court cases in order to get convictions for anglers and determine the shape of the new angling laws in Switzerland. When they bring that ‘science and philosophy’ back to the British angling debate, where is Prof Tench? Asleep.

On cruelty Prof Tench ventures:

We don’t need to defend our sport from claims that it is cruel; nature’s cruel, all we need to do is demonstrate that angling is a social and economic source for good in society.

That’s interesting: by saying this Prof Tench is doing that which he accuses me of, namely making an ethical case for angling. “Nature is cruel” is not a statement of fact but a moral judgement. On the basis of this he claims that angling has no case to answer. That may or may not be so but this line of argument is a rational, moral defence of angling of which Prof Tench says is “crass stupidity” to apply in the first place.

Could it be that Prof Tench hasn’t got a clue what he is talking about? Careful reading is obviously not his forte and for all his (according to Tench – Ed) competence in other fields, he seems an ethical simpleton. How can anyone enlightened and of his calibre (according to Tench – Ed) seriously advocate ignorance as the basis for action?

” I doubt if we’ll ever know what a fish feels or thinks, or if they really can do either and neither would I want to know if we could.”

He doesn’t want to know and therefore he thinks the problem solves itself – was life ever this simple? If ignorance is bliss Prof Tench is a happy man. But debates require facts and facts do not rise out of not wanting to know.

Prof Tench claims that I believe:

“…clubbing to death a 37lb pike for a French village barbecue shows why fishing is good'”

The emotive verb ‘clubbing’ and the possible sneer in the word ‘barbecue’ hint at a less than analytical approach to Prof Tench’s paper. In fact, my philosophy is summed up in the last two sentences of Hook, Line and Thinker:

“Fishing is good. Life is beautiful.”

Fishing there refers to all kinds of fishing, including, of course, catch and release as would be clear to anyone who had read the book.

To cut a long story short: everything Prof Tench writes about HL&T is plain rubbish and the only generous explanation I have for this is that he hasn’t read the book. I commend, if I may, Prof Tench to fully read the books he writes about.

Having read all the other sections of Prof Tench’s contribution, I found his broadside against Hook, Line and Thinker all the more bizarre. On all other topics he argues rationally and with persuasive logic. Perhaps he sees HL&T as an intrusion of a kind. There’s also a note of pessimism and nostalgia when he writes about how angling has lost its direction. But that’s not the fault of books like HL&T. Had Prof Tench read Hook, Line and Thinker, he would have realized that we share much common ground and reasons for optimism.