Lost in a Book

Many years ago, I became irritated by an article that claimed an invention yet just rehashed an old idea that had been around 30 years.

I wrote a bad-tempered letter to the editor of the publication pointing out that his young journalist could do with a few angling history lessons, and he wrote an equally bad-tempered letter back, saying that the old angling heroes 'you cling to' - the likes of Peter Stone, Richard Walker and Bob Church - were 'increasingly an irrelevance.'

Possibly I deserved that reply, but Stoney and Walker didn't deserve the comment, not least because they are no longer here to speak for themselves.

You see, even as a 20-year-old cub reporter on Angling Times, I was a sucker for angling history. One by one, I browsed the books in the AT 'library' - classics which, one by one, disappeared from the shelves until they were all gone.

It was the 1980s, and the start of the cult of the new, the beginning of Maggie Thatcher's new Britain of greed and selfishness. We came to know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

I have my suspicions that some of the older former AT staffers had recognised that the old library was unloved, and kidnapped the books to safety. Now, as I scan my own collection, I wish I had done the same. BB, Cholmondeley Pennell, Falkus, Ransome, Sheringham, Skues - all names which, gold-blocked on the spine, once looked down upon me from the old bookcase.

But there was one contemporary book which I remember fondly. It was compiled by Sheffield angling journalist Colin Graham, and published by, of all unlikely organisations, the AA. It was a guide to Great Britain's angling.

I remember in particular thumbing through its pages of lists imagining myself enjoying the 'ticket fishing' (it was a guide to public waters) on the Dorset Stour at, perhaps, 'Little Canford, Dorset. Coarse and Trout. ¾ mile from point just below Canford School to Iron Bridge below Manor Farm. Day tickets from Mrs Abbott, Manor Farm.' It was remarkably detailed of the fishing available when it was written, in 1977, and still remarkably accurate in 1982 when I began working at AT.

Last year, I was visiting my mum in Dorset when she said: 'Would you like this book?' It was the AA Guide to Angling in Great Britain, which she had bought from a charity shop. It was like seeing an old school friend again.

Chiefly, it connects me with my past. My old boss, Peter Collins, edited the sea fishing section. Colin Dyson, who supplied me with match reports during the Sunday night graveyard shift at AT, collaborated with Colin Graham. Likewise Don Bridgewood, Bob Gledhill, Bill Howes, Mike Millman.

But its river guides, arranged in alphabetical order, connect the past with the present. They provide a perspective which tells us much about the changes of the last 40 years.

'If ever proof was needed that cleaner rivers make for better fishing, the Trent is surely it, for no river in the British Isles is emerging from the shadow of pollution more dramatically than this one,' Colin Graham wrote of a river which, at that time, hosted 1,000-peg matches. Colin said that the Tame is a 'murky stream' carrying the Black Country industrial pollution to the Trent.

But on a positive note, he says: 'Today, it is clear barbel are coming back in real numbers for they are being caught above Long Eaton and, latterly, lower down too.' He says it's not there yet, but the Trent 'could become one of the most important fisheries in the country.'
There are sourer notes now. Among salmon rivers it lists the Plym and the Meavy in Devon, rivers which I doubt have a run these days. Indeed, many rivers are listed which have since dried to a seasonal trickle, lost perhaps forever. It says the Great Ouse has become so popular, the 'freelance' angler may not find a spot to cast on a Sunday. It is slightly sad that the mass exodus of angler-laden coaches from the coalfields of the Midlands no longer arrive each weekend, garrulous and thirsty, to fill the banks and the pubs.

The sea fishing, too, has suffered, maybe more than rivers. Of my home town of Weymouth it lists black bream, coalfish, plaice, sole and garfish as being commonly caught from the beaches. You could then catch sharks with a Weymouth skipper, huge ling and 30lb cod.

But in some aspects of the endless lists the book provides, we see signs of hope for specialist anglers. In 1976, the Great Ouse barbel record was 12lb 2oz, caught on maggot. That's a record now beaten all ends up. The biggest Swale barbel was 10lb 8oz,. the biggest from the Ure Brian Morland's 11lb 7oz fish on a lobworm, though it mentions a 14lb 5oz fish with one eye, caught by Brian out of season.

John Cadd held the Thames barbel record for one of 31lb, taken on bread flake, and simultaneously the pike record at 30lb. Though it must be said that John was, or is, a roguish man whose records were not trusted by everyone.

And there's a point; which of them is still around? I'm looking now at the Top 50 Bream catalogued in descending order. The 12lb 14oz fish by G. Harper from the Suffolk Stour, of all places top the list, but where is G Harper? Further down the list, my old friend Tony Charlett from Oxford is, tragically, gone but his 11lb 10oz fish is recorded. And there's a G. Marsden with an 11lb 1 oz fish from a Cheshire Mere in 1976. Wonder if he still remembers that fish? He must be getting on a bit now…

It's 1976 and the late Roger Harker nets an 11lb 1oz bream for Graham Marsden, a lake record bream that stood for many years. (Note the butt length of the rod and the thickness of the blank)

Top of the carp list is Dick Walker, long gone, but Chris Yates is still here, and has caught bigger than the 43lb 12oz fish from Redmire which was second on the list. And who's this lying in 4th spot? R. Clay, with a 1966 fish weighing 42lb? Surely not our Ron? Indeed, not; a second cousin, he tells me. Jack Hilton, Bill Quinlan and other names loom at me from the past.

We can all learn from the AA Guide to Angling in Great Britain. It provides a context for the present, faithfully charting in figures and names what happened.

It's not just nostalgia, this old book, its pages now falling loose, cover fading. It shines the brightest light possible on our failure to nurture what should be our children's heritage, and its occasional high points remind us that, if we care enough, we can care for the future.