| PROFESSOR BARRIE RICKARDS | |
Professor Barrie Rickards is President of the Specialist Anglers Association (SAA) and President of the Lure Angling Society (LAS), as well as a very experienced and successful specialist angler with a considerable tally of big fish to his credit. He is author of several fishing books, including the classic work ‘Fishing For Big Pike’, co-authored with the late Ray Webb and only recently his first novel, ‘Fishers On The Green Roads’ was published. He has been an angling writer in newspapers and magazines for nigh on four decades. Barrie takes a keen interest in angling politics. Away from angling Barrie is a Professor in Palaeontology at the University of Cambridge, a Fellow of Emmanuel College and a curator of the Sedgwick Museum of Geology. |
The Lady was for Turning
Did you see the story recently about the anti angling lady who had seen the light and converted to a pro-angling stance, even running her own fisheries? My immediate reaction was much the same as most people I guess, namely that it was good news (and similar to the Richard Course conversion of some years ago). But on reflection I find there’s an odd feel about it too, so I’d welcome your own views on this matter.
It seems that after ‘investigation’ the lady realised that angling really was a conservation-based pastime. Well, haven’t we been saying this for most of the last half of the previous century, if not before that? Is it not extraordinarily arrogant of anti-anglers to conclude that only they have thought about these things? What about the four million anglers who happen to be around at any one time? Haven’t they thought about it? Can we not listen to the raised voice of 4 million? But the lady, it seems, is still opposed to shooting: maybe she should ‘investigate’ that too, like the millions that have done so before. Am I being a touch cynical in noting that she now runs commercial fisheries? With the emphasis on conservation, you understand. Of course, what else?
Angling on the Cheap
Another thing I saw recently was a Tom Martindale saying, “Anybody who pays £ 350 a year to catch fish is a bit short of grey matter.” Apparently he wouldn’t fish anywhere that charged more than £ 4 a day. In that couple of sentences he encapsulates the very problem that is angling today. We’ve had it on the cheap for so long we expect to continue to pay nothing for our sport, and our organisations are financial weaklings in consequence.
One of my friends pays £ 40 a month for a day a week at the local gym (or, rather, a couple of hours a week). That’s £ 500 for about a hundred hours. Many other people pay a lot more than that for their gym, or their golf club, or whatever, and a lot of anglers spend a lot more than that on beer in a year. Angling organisations should be one of the biggest landowners in the land, like the RSPB but with views like those stated above we’ll be lucky to have access to any water at all in fifty years time.
That Lady Again – Born Again Convert
Since I wrote the previous paragraph I bumped into someone who has worked with the lady mentioned in the opening paragraph. He regards her as very committed to her fisheries and her conservation, and very forceful in her views and her position. That does not surprise me at all because most born again converts to anything do tend to hold rather more extreme views than those born to the pastime in the first place. Messianic individuals are all very well, perhaps even necessary, but they need also to realise that ordinary human beings surround them.
Peta – Rightwing Christian Fundamentalists?
I recently enjoyed an article by Alvin Ray on some anti-angler antics. Peta he described as a mixed bunch of rightwing Christian fundamentalists. Well, he may be right, but its pseudo-left types that we need to worry about, because anti-anglers in the UK are certainly not of right wing persuasion.
I wasn’t too surprised when Alvin described a theatrical luvvie as quite inconvincible about angling: quite so. In a similar vein I sat on a panel with John Wilson recently (among others) and the question of the danger to angling came up. I said that I was sure we could win any battle, but that there might be some. John thought the anti-anglers such a minuscule group that we had nothing to fear. Not from them, that’s for sure, but it’s the out of proportion coverage that they get in the media that is our danger. Given that coverage, and the fact that we are rarely allowed a right of reply, they can and do influence the pseudo-leftists such as the theatrical luvvie just mentioned.
Alvin Ray goes on to deal comprehensively with the anti angling, so-called scientific literature (eg, Professor Broom’s remarks on nervous systems, Edinburgh University research, and so on). He points out the flaws; and then goes on to give an account of Professor Rose’s studies at the University of Wyoming which more or less demolishes any idea that fish can feel pain and suffer as a result of proper angling.
To my mind we always miss a trick here because by far the most comprehensive destruction of the fish-feel-pain lobby was accomplished by Pottinger of the Institute of Freshwater Ecology who examined all the world’s literature, not just a selected few lists of research. He concluded that not only was there no evidence at all that fish feel pain, but that it is highly unlikely that they could do so. You don’t need to be a scientist to work this out – commonsense and logic are quite enough – but it’s nice to have the literature so well analysed. Of course, Pottinger was slightly more cautious than my abridged version above, but substantially that’s what it boils down to.
Disagreement with Des on Summer Piking
It must be rather rare for me to disagree with Des Taylor, because of all the angling writers he does seem to me the one who keeps his eye most closely on the ball. But he’s of the view that summer piking, including lure fishing, should be banned because it puts the pike under too much stress. I used to think this myself and, along with other members of the Cambridgeshire Pike Anglers, I opposed the then Water Authority move (for reasons of convenience) to put the pike close season back to June 16th (from 1 October). The ‘stress’ didn’t happen in reality because not a lot of summer piking was done. Nor is it now. Those that do lure fishing in the summer seem to me to know what they are about. The most important thing is to use tackle man enough for the job, so that playing of pike is kept to a minimum.
Surely most summer pikers do this anyway. If not – and some may not – isn’t education better than banning? I’m always uneasy about banning things. Even pike fly fishers use seriously powerful gear these days, so I don’t have a gripe in that quarter either.
Losing our Wilderness
I’ve just been talking to an angler who has come back from Lake Nasser and found it difficult to settle into the hectic pace and frivolity of western life. That’s the trouble with fishing in wilderness regions; it has that effect on you. We’re losing our ‘wilderness’ fishing in the UK, gradually, and too many rules and regulations don’t help either.
