Barrie Rickards' Angling

Hot-spots and big water pike
I was reading an article in Pike and Predators recently, by Gary Knowles on big water pike, and he mentioned the idea of hotspots and how pike anglers abuse them. I had to agree with his remarks, with one proviso. The kind of hotspots to which he was referring, and to which flotillas of boats sped daily, were not hotspots in the sense originally defined by Peter Wheat, or by Ray Webb and me in If you want to know what a real hotspot is then look it up in “Fishing for Big Pike” and read of the evidence. Of course, pike feed outside hotspots! All this was clearly described in our book and it is a pity that a few more people don't take the trouble to read up before talking about hotspots. Not that I'm criticising Gary Knowles on this score because what he has to say about the so-called hotspots on trout reservoirs is perfectly sound in my view.

The on-going debate about barbless hooks
There has always been on-going debate on barbed v. barbless trebles and I do note that a few more people are coming around to my (minority) viewpoint that micro-barbed trebles are best. Fish do come off barbless trebles, whatever people say. That would not bother me unduly, but I am increasingly concerned about the amount of damage barbless hooks do to fish that are to be returned to the water.

More recently there have been debates about trebles v. VB doubles (see for example Pike & Predators no. 77). I have no doubts at all about this. Those double hooks were always based upon misconceptions to my mind and I don't think they work very well in practice. I remember fishing quite a bit with Colin Dyson, who was well sold on them (he had experimented with single hook rigs in the early 1960s, as I had). On one of our fenland pike trips, Colin and I, and Tim Cole, had eight double figure fish in one day. We were all in one swim, chatting away, and fishing two or three rods each, all mixed up. Four of the doubles were twenties, and each one fell to my rods. Colin and Tim weighed them, to an accompaniment of rude remarks, but, and this is the more important thing, Colin pulled out of three doubles on his VB rigs, and two of these three looked like twenties to me. We could have had six in the day! I know that he got rather wary of them in the end after a few other experiences. So, Kevin Woolner's recent remarks get full support from me on all fronts. In lure fishing I don't rate either singles or barbless at all - and it's not without experience, which in my case goes back to the 1950s.

Jerk-baiting for pike
Jerk bait fishing for big pike is still with us. I remember, many years back now, being introduced to this by Malcolm Bannister who had obtained some from the States and handed me a fistful to try. There's one thing that puzzles me a bit and that is the insistence of some anglers that you cannot jerk bait fish unless you have a multiplier. It is true that a multiplier is nicer, and I use them a lot, but I have also used big fixed spool reels with big jerks and other very big lures, and have not found them a problem at all. So I'm not sure what the problem is. Is there anyone out there who can explain?

Post mortem on the worst piking winter for years
Perhaps its a good time to hold a post mortem on the 'worst' piking winter for many years - at least, so say lots of anglers who have had a hard time. Some good fish have been caught, of course, but even the guys who have caught them consider that taken as a whole the season has been bad. Certainly that has been my own experience, my 'worst' season for thirty years with one scraper twenty amongst the bigger ones. I say scraper twenty because in reality it was a seventeen pounder with a 2½ lb jack in its throat. I caught the same fish three days later and it weighed in at a little over 17 lbs. After a good discussion of the Ely/Fenland branch of the PAC in March the most popular theory, which I liked too, was that last summer was such a good breeding and grooming time for fry that the pike concentrated on feeding on those fry right through the winter. Any fish that I did catch this winter were in very good condition, proving that they were feeding well, if not on my deadbaits as a rule. The problem does seem to have been nationwide, so it would be interesting to hear of other views on this matter.

Problems affecting the Carp Society
It's rather sad to read of all the problems affecting the Carp Society, not to mention the fact that as I write they do not now support the Specialist Anglers Association (SAA). There's a very clear and good précis of the problems by Tim Paisley in Carp Talk (March 20th issue). The Carp Society does support the Countryside Alliance, but their dropping of the SAA seems to have caused some unhappiness in the membership. There's no good reason why they should not support both. I do. Several SAA officials are very pro the CA (and some rather anti, but we don't let this get under our skin: there's room in angling for varied viewpoints).

Reintroducing the otter at any cost
The other problem rumbles on. Despite all the good work by Chris Burt of the SAA this government seems intent of reintroducing the otter at any cost. Graham Scholey, chairman of the steering group of the Otter Biodiversity Action Plan, was recently quoted as saying “Fishery managers will have to accept that vested interests are in conflict with the Governments commitment to the nationwide re-population of the otter….” And that the cost of any anti-otter fencing is “..the responsibility of the fishery owner.” Charming.

As I have said many times in the past, what these otter fanatics should have done was make sure that the nation's waters had enough healthy fish stocks to actually support otters. This they have singularly not done. In fact all they betray is a gross ignorance of the problem. If the otters eventually suffer from ill health and decline, then the responsibility is at their door, not that of anglers. Anglers want otters - but not at any price to otters and fish alike. Related to this problem is that of the decline of eels. As it is known that eel populations nationwide are in trouble, what is the point of pushing ahead with otters now when their prime feed supply is at risk? If these otter people really cared about otters they would put the eel population right first. In reality, of course, as I have reported in this column not so long ago, others are doing that. So if the otters ever do have a welcome and stable return it will be down to the efforts of other people not the otter people who, in my view, are acting rashly.

John Bailey - an arrogant article
One of my enjoyable reads these days is the magazine Waterlog, published every so often during the year. Yet it was in this magazine (The Snowy Edition, Feb/Mar '04) that I came across an article by John Bailey that I think is one of the most arrogant I have every read. Now, the late Maurice Kausman once descried some of my own writing as arrogant, so it takes one to know one! I cannot claim to have understood the whole article: indeed a few sentences seemed to me totally undecipherable. So I may have got some things wrong, in which case John will no doubt correct me. (Nor can I pen a brief letter to Waterlog, because it would be less than brief).

The article is written as though coming from a friend, but it doesn't take a genius to realise that he's talking about himself. There may be some satire and humour in the article, but if so, it was lost on me. The theme seems to be that he feels a bit isolated in his views: the word he uses is “marooned”. Basically, he disapproves, so it seems, of all aspects of modern angling, especially keepnets, especially carp puddles, especially bolt rigs and boilies, especially bivvies, especially (luncheon) meat tins, especially publishers of instructions books, especially almost everything really.

Well no, that's not strictly true. He likes quiet, wilderness style fishing (none left in England, of course!). He likes Mr. Crabtree, Jack Hargreaves, Bernard Venables, the Wild Trout Society, the S. & T. Association, Medlar Press, Merlin Unwin, Passion for Angling, and so on.

He describes a local river where the trees are cut back and decorated with floats, shots and 'skeletons of hooked birds'. He criticises others who 'empty swims, pose for photographs, and with stupid cups'. (Bob Nudd, perhaps?). He doesn't want to weigh fish (His 'friend' is 'well educated, successful in life and….well-balanced.'). He visited the NEC angling show '…and rushed out to vomit…'. He even has a go at the social structure of our society. His salvation, as the article eventually makes clear, is that there are a few other people of like ilk; he doesn't, in the end, feel quite so marooned.

So what are we to make of all this anti-angling stuff? Because that is what it is: anti-angling. I understand that John's writings on angling are the most quoted by the anti-angling brigade. What an accolade! Of course, one can sympathise with JB's wish to have quiet, peaceful fishing in remote places. But everyone doesn't feel like that. If they did John wouldn't have any quiet, peaceful fishing, would he? Some like to fish in groups, in teams, in matches, because they like that kind of camaraderie. Why knock them? They don't all leave litter or cram their keepnets too full, Indeed, my own research on litter showed quite clearly that, per capita, match anglers were the best of anglers in this respect. Every experienced angler knows that keepnets, properly used, do no harm whatsoever to fish, so John ought to stop banging on about that one. I'm not saying that too many anglers do not leave littler, or tackle in trees, or misuse keepnets, but I'll return to that issue before the end of the article.

I don't want to fish in a carp-filled puddle either, but I do not knock those who wish to do so, provided the fish are looked after properly by all concerned. For a start, suppose you were an invalid. Are not facilities at many pools extremely helpful for the infirm amongst us?

At it happens I don't myself want to fish carp lakes surround by bivvies and carpers fishing bolt rigs. I can't see anything wrong with it if that what turns people on and, again, provided the fish are looked after. As far as John's statement that he doesn't necessarily want to weigh his fish, to photograph it and report it, that's his choice. He used to do this, as part of the up-and-coming specimen hunting movement. So why knock others who are only now going through his own learning/experience curve?

Another thing he should remember, when he denigrates instructional books, is that people are coming into angling all the time (as well as leaving it) and they do need instruction. JB may well be beyond instruction, I don't know really, but other people do need help and guidance as they begin a sport. So don't knock instruction stuff even if you don't need it. To do so is extreme arrogance and intolerance. That last word really is important. It is crucial to anglers to become more tolerant of each other's funny ways, not less tolerant. We'll need angling bodies to work really closely together in the near future and that is not going to happen if the Wild Trout Society and the S and T Association members - or one of them - are kicking hell out of the others.

As I said earlier, there are some badly behaved anglers around, but it is quite wrong for John Bailey to tar all anglers with the same brush (and, at the same time, provide the anti-anglers with ammunition). What he needs to do, instead of sitting on his backside criticising others, it TAKE PART in the efforts some groups are making to rectify things that need rectifying. If John joined the SAA and attended a few meetings he would learn that there are people putting their backs into action, instead of just whingeing. Is it really too much to ask John to put his money where his mouth is? Or isn't he going to get enough out of helping other anglers? Down to you.