Journalist and predator angler Chris Bishop fell in love with the Fens when he moved to Norfolk five years ago. In a monthly series, exclusive to FISHINGmagic, he gives us a glimpse of this unique landscape and some of the characters who fish it.
“20, no, nearer 25!” I thought it was bigger than that for a minute or two. I can’t believe how hard summer pike fight in a fast-flowing river. I’m still catching my breath as I slip the hooks out of 12lbs of mayhem that chased a surface lure half way across the Wissey before the hooks nailed it and it careered off in the current. As I lie down on the bank to slip it back into the river, there’s a huge swirl that makes me jump out of my skin. A fish getting on for twice the size was holed up under the undercut bank all the time – literally right under my feet. Maybe I really have got TOSSER tattooed on my forehead in six inch high letters after all. Undercut bank. Try a sneaky one along there before you ponce about casting in between the moored boats, overhanging trees, etc, next time, I make a mental note. It can’t have gone far, I decide. So I sit there for 10 minutes and plot its downfall over a cuppa. Then I swap the surface lure for a Shad Rap, throw it across the river and start tapping it along just under the surface, letting the current drag it across the streamer weed waving in the flow. I see it a split second before it engulfs the lure and wrenches the rod round. A flash of a white mouth, all green and gold as it appears from nowhere in a swirl, gills flared, and launches itself at the lure in a great bow wave. Wow, what a fish. It wallows on the surface as I bend into it, tail slapping the surface, then it’s thrown the lure in a head shake and I’m close to slinging the rod in after it. Twenty..? Nearer 25. Even I’m lost for words. Well, for a few seconds anyway. Talk about the highs and lows of fishing. Then a bloke with a beer gut that overflows his boxer shorts emerges from a pleasure cruiser moored a few yards down the bank. He puts the world to rights with a great bu-u-u-a-a-r-r-rp of a belch that echoes off Hilgay Bridge before he spots me. “Had anythink mate,” he says, thoughtfully scratching his crotch. “Nearly,” I reply. “Wot you after then..? Pike..? Ere, I saw one right where you’re standin’ last night. Bleedin’ monster. Big as that bleedin’ gate post ‘e woz.” “Really,” I say, looking down at the water to humour him. We all lose fish. And it isn’t usually the small ones that roll off the hooks. Still, at least I’m here. Beats being at work. Oh no, he’s coming up the bank to make friends. “Tell you what though,” says my new mate. “Pike are mental. Bleedin’ mental. Bleedin’ things. I caught one once, bleedin’ greedy great bastard ‘e woz. “We was gonna bleedin’ eat ‘im weren’t we, meant to be nice in’t they, but do you know what ‘e bleedin’ ‘ad inside ‘im, when we got ‘im ‘ome an’ opened ‘im up like..? “A bleedin’ rat. A bleedin’ great rat. ‘E must ‘ave just et it. Our Trace was screamin’, get it out of me kitchen, get it out of me bleedin’ kitchen. So do you know what I did..?” I shrug, not daring to guess the punchline. Perhaps he gave it mouth-to-mouth and it now lives in a cage by the telly. Maybe it’s even learned to use the remote, programme the video or pop down the offie when the lager supplies are getting low or something. “I got it by the tail, the rat like, an’ I chased her out of the bleedin’ ‘ouse an’ down the bleedin’ road with it goin ‘squeak, squeak, squeak’ din’ I. She was screamin’, silly bleedin’ cow. Ran a bleedin’ mile. She won’ even touch bleedin’ cod now. Silly bleedin’ cow.” I’ve got a mental picture of Our Trace running for her life across an Essex council estate with bleached locks flying, all satellite TV dishes, right-to-buy and XR3is with alloy wheels, as her other half shuffles off to the hedgerow for a leak. A loud fart makes the ducks look accusingly in my direction. Bleedin’ mental. Wish I’d gone to bleedin’ work now. Meet Tony Martin I always thought he’d be taller for some reason, having covered Tony Martin’s story since the day after two burglars broke into his ramshackle farmhouse and only one made it out.
“I planted some lovely trees over there seven years ago,” he says, pointing into the distance across a cornfield. “Sequoias, perseconas – I’ve even got a Finnish oak in over there, bit brittle, mind you. “Did you know my case, my appeal, it cost £ 2million – that’s enough money to have a policeman standing on that Hungate corner for the next 30 years. The media don’t seem to have got hold of the reality of the thing.” I nod thoughtfully, jotting it all down in my fractured shorthand. We’re surrounded by photographers and TV crews. The prosecution said he was one or two tractors short of the full farmyard at his original trial. He got life for murder, but the sentence was cut to five years after the conviction was reduced to manslaughter on appeal. He’s a folk hero either way in the Fens. On the fourth anniversary of the shooting career crook Brendan Fearon – who claims his injuries left him crippled and unable to work – is pictured on the front page of The Sun riding a mountain bike. Half the country’s up in arms about it. Well that’s what the radio’s saying. So I’ve come to ask Mr Martin what he reckons, like you do in my job. But Mr Martin isn’t really biting. “They say he’s not too well, it’s ruined his sex life,” Tony Martin observes, when I get him off the subject of the trees. “Tell him to come down here and have a night out with me.” I’ve often pondered the bizarre set of coincidences that threw three people together on an August night four years ago with such fateful consequences. All Tony Martin wanted was a good night’s sleep, as he went to bed and wondered whether the weather would hold for the harvest. Hours later a 16-year-old boy lay dead in his garden. His mates just wanted an easy steal. Four years on, the police and council in King’s Lynn are backing a new initiative to get youngsters out fishing. Get them off the streets, teach them a bit about the countryside – build a bit of self-esteem. I wonder what Fred Barras would have made of that. He’d probably be alive now if society hadn’t let his generation down. Or he’d spent time staring at a float sailing down the Trent, dreaming what the next bite might bring. Fishing kept so many of my generation from going off the rails. All I cared about when I was his age was getting out with my old man for a few hours’ tenching after school. The world’s moved on since then. Maybe not always for the better. The Stranglers Sil Wilcox, the Stranglers’ manager, smiles politely when I tell him I used to jump up and down gobbing at them 25 years ago. A generation later and we’re on the beach by my house, as New York society photographer Harrison Funk shoots the next CD cover. Mates off the local papers smile politely at my battered old Nikons and pretend they aren’t with me. Bizarre how the world moves on, I think out loud, remembering the No More Heroes era, as I sneak a long lens shot over Mr Funk’s crouching form.
Maybe fishing’s a bit like The Stranglers. You can give it up for half your adult life but when you finally come back to it, it’s just the same as it always was – just a new line-up singing the same old songs. Norfolk Coast, the Stranglers might be calling their new album. You read it here first. They’re inspired by this part of the world, apparently. You should see the sunsets, I tell Mr Funk. Bet they’d make an ace CD cover. You do have groovy light here, he agrees. But the band are getting bored. The holidaymakers don’t even know who they are. How can anyone not know The Stranglers, I think to myself, as I take the short cut over the cliffs. With three hours of daylight left I dive in the car, with ‘Always The Sun’ blaring big-time. The Mad Drain Just enough time to make the drains and throw some lures around. How many times has the weatherman told you stories that make you laugh, I sing at the top of my voice as I hit the holiday traffic. I fancy the Mad Drain, don’t ask me why. I’ve got my eye on a swim with an overhanging tree, where Dave Marrs had five pike in as many casts last winter. He was landing one as I turned up, a six pounder with a great bite mark that suggested something big and nasty lurked in the vicinity. A big fish lashed out at my lure but I snagged it on the tree next cast. Maybe it was the jack muncher. Maybe tonight’s the night, I think, as I pull up 20 yards down the road from the spot and rummage in the boot for a couple of lures. “There must be one helluva pike in here Chris me old mucker,” said Disco Dave before he disappeared back to his zander. Dave’s the only bloke I know who finds catching a pike every cast boring, by the way. I smile, reliving a few of last season’s adventures with Disco as I creep up the bank. But something’s wrong. The tree’s gone, every scrap of vegetation’s been pulled up with it and another little hotspot’s gone to that big drain in the sky. Now where Columbus, I ask myself, as I walk back to the car without even bothering to wet a line. I debate whether to head off across the Fens in search of Disco and the all-night crew. I’ve got a rough idea where they’ll be but I’m not exactly tooled up for it.
I love this river and all its whims. Even though it’s only smiled on me once or twice in the five years I’ve fished it. I know it holds much bigger pike than the 23 I fluked on a summer’s afternoon a few years back. But it’s just nice to be here, I kid myself, as I fire a spoon at the far bank and jink it back towards me. Half an hour and half a dozen lures later, I’m still doing it as the sun drops and I wonder whether there’s enough loose change knocking around the car to stand a pint on the way home. Walking past the deserted mooring I wonder where my mate from Essex is. And whether Our Trace has conquered her fear of cod and chips yet. Matt Drew’s buzzing. He’s talking ten to the dozen as we try a couple of drains, he’s itching for a fish. I nailed a few while he was still asleep before I ran out of livebaits. We try a couple of usually reliable spots but my floats sit motionless and his lures don’t elicit any response from the pike we know are in there. Matt takes a wander with a lure rod and a pocketful of lures as I plot up on the mad drain, wondering if Marrs’s jack muncher’s in the mood for a mackerel. The clouds are sweeping in from The Wash and I’m half-tempted to try for a picture but the cameras are in the car and I’m soaking up the solitude, perched on the floodbank, when Matt sings out: “I’ve got one – blimey, it’s a great big perch…” I reel in the dead, sling the rod up the bank and run to the car for a camera. Nice perch, wicked perch, all a-bristle as Matt lobs it on the scales. It’s a two pounder – give or take a few ounces. The landing net’s bouncing around a bit in the gathering breeze but it’s a PB either way. Matt’s buzzing even more than normal now. |
