Mark Wintle, an angler for thirty-five years, is on a quest to discover and bring to you the magic of fishing. Previously heavily involved with match fishing he now fishes for the sheer fun of it. With an open and enquiring mind, each week Mark will bring to you articles on fishing different rivers, different methods and what makes rivers, and occasionally stillwaters, tick. Add to this a mixed bag of articles on catching big fish, tackle design, angling politics and a few surprises.
Are you stuck in a rut fishing the same swim every week? Do you dare to try something different and see a whole new world of angling open up? Yes? Then read Mark Wintle’s regular weekly column.
HISTORICAL ‘FACTS’ – THE 2LB ROACH COUNT
Over the last few years, I have spent hours pouring over old fishing books, magazines and newspapers researching big roach in particular, plus anything else that takes my interest. Time and time again I have come across reports of the same historical catches but with years, even decades, between the reports. Sometimes the facts have remained constant. But at other times, the stories have slowly become distorted in a way that the original captor never intended.
Wilf Cutting made some huge catches of big roach from Hornsea Mere
Once someone has committed a ‘fact’ to a book it is not long before it is accepted as such, and because of the difficulties of getting details from the original captor or newspaper reports it is easy to see how these stories become distorted. I’d like to take you through some actual examples to show how difficult it can be to discern the truth after a few years, and conclude with a warning to those with short memories. There is no evidence that any of the following are deliberate lies, more the case of the frailties of human memory.
Hornsea Mere Roach Anyone with an awareness of roach fishing history will know of the tremendous roach catches that were taken from Hornsea Mere from 1915 onwards by Wilf Cutting, Jim Bazley and others. I have found reports of these catches in books by Jim Bazley, Edward Ensom (‘Faddist’), David Carl Forbes and John Bailey, as well as magazine reports in Angling (Wilf Cutting) and Fishing (T K Wilson). It does not take long to ascertain that the actual details of catches remain virtually constant between all of these reports. Furthermore, there are not that many details of catches, only about six bag details plus half a dozen individual fish from 2-15-8 to 3-10. Cutting admits that he did not keep a record of his catches so that only about four of his catches are documented. It is hard to quantify exactly what was caught all those years ago for most of the catches were never reported. Did anyone else catch a three-pounder? We shall never know.
Dick Walker lost count of his 2-pounders
Keeping with roach, several famous anglers have stated extraordinary totals of two-pound plus roach yet the figures claimed vary in different books and magazines. Some can be explained, others are more tricky. Take Dick Walker for instance.
In 1981 he claimed several hundred, yet in a commemorative Angling Times article he claimed over a thousand, yet in ‘No Need To Lie’ he said that he’d lost count long ago. John Bailey has similar problems, having lost his fishing diaries. Three hundred became four hundred became five hundred. Is it because he’s still catching an awful lot of big roach or because he honestly doesn’t know? I also found discrepancies in his accounts of the seventies with accounts of the same period by John Wilson. Perhaps one’s memory gets selective after thirty years.
I can at least explain the three hundred reported for Owen Wentworth. Owen wrote that he had no record of his catches bar a few that he’d reported to the press over the years. Not long before Owen’s death, Roy Westwood of Anglers Mail interviewed him, and working on the basis of half a dozen a year and fishing for fifty years, got the figure of three hundred.
It was estimated that Owen Wentworth caught 300 roach over 2lb
The other problem with big roach is that those in the know are wise to keep their catches very much to themselves. Not reporting your catches to Angling Times and Anglers Mail has many advantages. To illustrate this take Jim Gibbinson’s book ‘Modern Specimen Hunting’. In it, Jim analyses the reports of specimen fish reported for the 80/81 and 81/82 seasons. I was fishing a big roach water at that time. The other anglers and me took great care not to let details get reported. It shows in Jim’s lists. He reports 82 and 103 two-pounders respectively for the two seasons. I estimate that the water that I was fishing produced over fifty two-pounders in 80/81, and over two hundred in 81/82 (sadly no longer so productive), and my own total over those two years was 49 (8 and 41). This illustrates that the newspaper reports are but a tiny fraction of what is actually caught each season.
Barbel At least with barbel most of the monsters have been caught in the last decade or so. But there are exceptions. Both pre and post second world war some huge fish were reported from the Hampshire Avon and Dorset Stour by salmon anglers. But in just about every case, the fish were either foul hooked or caught out of season. When Brian Dowling began his river barbel record list, I supported his efforts. One fish intrigued me. It was a reported fish of 17-14 from the Hampshire Avon caught by B Sheppard in July 1971. I found reports in the 1973 Woodbine Angling Yearbook, an Anglers Mail yearbook and an Angling article by Peter Wheat. The big question was – where was the evidence?
John Bailey lost his fishing diaries and he too lost count of his roach catches over 2lb, says Mark
At the time, the Royalty was struggling to produce much over eleven pounds. I knew that Peter Wheat has been researching a historical barbel book for years and asked him whether any evidence existed. ‘No’ was the answer. So what happened? One theory that I have (and it’s only a theory) is that the fish was a 9-14 weighed on the old 32lb Avons (which make several revolutions of the dial) by someone who didn’t know how to use Avons properly, and didn’t realise the significance of a 17-14 barbel (or as a salmon angler didn’t care!). If you do have the photographic evidence and witness statements for this fish then I’m sure Brian would love to hear from you.
Old Records Back in 1968, the British Record Fish Committee had a clear out of some historical records that they felt could no longer be sustained by the evidence produced. Some of these fish probably should never have been accepted in the first place whilst others were probably genuine yet due to the passage of many years, cannot regain their place in the record list. In the former category I would place the Annan chub and that preposterous 7-2 grayling, yet there might be some credence to the grayling caught by Dr Sanctuary (a well known and respected game angler in his day) of 4-9, and whatever happened to the old record dace of 1-8-5?
Has anyone ever found further evidence for these fish? Fred Buller managed to track down Aylmer Tryon’s record barbel and got it re-instated. Other fish such as the former record seatrout from the Dorset Frome have disappeared into oblivion. As for silver bream, we seem to be slowly getting nearer a true record weight. The former claims for fish up four and a half pounds have never been substantiated, and could have been either big roach/bream hybrids or silver/bronze bream hybrids.
Best Ever? At times, our weekly angling papers like to sensationalise catches. But they should beware of overstating the claim. Unless they are prepared to do a lot of digging, they are more likely to get egg on their face. A recent example was the catch of roach by Martin Bowler from Sway Lakes. Fifteen two-pounders (plus nine by his companion) in a day was claimed as the best ever catch of big roach. Give AT their due, they did publish my letter in full, accepting my opinion that this was an exceptional catch but not the best ever. Not even the best catch from Sway by a long way. Fortunately I was able to back my opinion with details of some catches that exceeded Martin’s catch, though with the passing of many decades just how verifiable is any such catch? And in fifty years time how could you verify Martin’s catch? You would only be able to accept the news report at face value.
Bob Buteux centre, Len Arbery right, and some website editor on the left
And herein lies the danger of any catch that is reported of large numbers of fish over a certain weight on a single day. The angler is getting a bite every cast. At some point, the tedium of weighing and recording the weight of each fish carefully becomes too much hassle. Why not weigh the exceptional ones? And guess the marginal ones? So the biggest ones are weighed, say with roach the 2-12s, etc. but the marginal two-pounders start to be guessed. Bear in mind there have been claimed catches of fifty, even seventy, two-pound roach in a day. Would you weigh every single one? And write it down? Not everyone would.
Stuffed roach One final example on roach. Len Arbery’s ‘The Complete Book of River Fishing’ quotes O. M. A. Reed (foreword in 2nd edition of ‘This Fishing’ by Capt. L. A. Parker) on a catch of roach made by the Warren brothers (17 two-pounders) on 8th December 1945, nine of which ended up in a glass case in Bill Warren’s guest house. Already there is a discrepancy as the case has nine roach in it yet OMAR states that ten were set up. But a 50s article by Captain Parker states that the roach were caught over the course of three days, 28th ,29th ,30th November 1945. So, pick the bones out of that lot!
Conclusion It seems that if you report a ‘fact’ enough times it will pass into legend. If it gets distorted along the way then even the distortion will eventually gain credence. So check the facts as far back as you can when looking at historical catches. This takes painstaking effort to get right, and even then, you need to establish how the integrity of the angler stacks up, and whether witnesses can back it up.
