If angling was a purely mechanical exercise, where all you had to learn was how to set up your tackle, cast and retrieve, and play fish when you hooked one, then there would be no experts. There would be nothing more than competent anglers and not so competent anglers. With so little difference between them you would hardly know the difference.


Professor Barrie Rickards, a man of vast intelligence and an expert on many things

Yet there are good anglers and bad anglers; experts and amateurs, which is why the same old faces win most of the matches each season, and why certain specialist anglers (apart from the ones whose success is due only to wearing the fish down with time) consistently catch quality fish of all species from every water they tackle.

So what is it that separates the real experts from the merely good and competent?I think that is probably the most difficult of all questions to answer. It is certainly not a question you can answer with hard facts and cold information. If it was we could all be experts.

I’ve been fortunate enough, however, to have fished with a good many experts over the years, and I’ve never missed an opportunity to observe them in action and, although on the surface they don’t seem to be doing anything a great deal differently than any other good angler, once you pay very close attention to how they fish you can detect many of the nuances that set them apart from the ordinary.

To begin with they are extremely confident. Never for a moment do they consider that they are wasting their time, even in conditions that are far from ideal. They may concede that it is a day when they may not catch as many as on most other, better days, and that they will probably have to fish very hard for what they do catch. But you never, or very rarely, hear them say that to catch fish is impossible. Impossible is a word they don’t have in their vocabulary. Give them the tackle and bait, and place them on a water with fish in it, and they believe implicitly that they will catch fish. They have no doubts whatsoever. I’ve heard it said by many an envious angler that they could pull fish from an empty bucket.


Keith Arthur, another expert all-round angler, but especially in the match fishing arena
Experts are also twitchy. They’re never still. Even when they know there is nothing more they can do but wait, you will see them fussing with this, that and the other. They are incredibly impatient. Whoever coined the old wive’s tale that an angler needs patience has never met an expert angler, and certainly never seen one in action. They cast more than anyone else for one thing, even to the point of casting unnecessarily, for they automatically assume that if they don’t get a bite in a reasonably short time then they must be in the wrong spot; or the bait has come off; or something else is wrong. No way will they accept that there is nothing they can do to get a bite. There must be something they can do, is their philosophy. If nothing is happening, then they will make it happen.

Watch an expert when he’s float fishing on a river. His arms will be going like bee’s wings. Casting; mending line; feeding line; holding the rod high; then low; holding back; letting the float have its head; feeding bait; retrieving; feeding; casting; the rhythm goes on, ceaselessly, unflinchingly, positively, the only break to the pattern when he hooks and lands a fish – and even then he will keep that feeding pattern going if the fish he is landing isn’t giving him too much trouble.

Even when legering you will see him continually tightening the line, or twitching the bait back; doing something, anything, to attract a bite.

Yet when it comes to concentration the expert is second to none. He doesn’t have to be twitching and fussing all the time. When he realises that he needs to concentrate to see a bite he will give it all he’s got, to the point where he becomes oblivious to everything else around him.


Not many better experts at lure fishing than the Piking Pirate Gordy Burton
For instance, someone I know was fishing an island on the river Dane, and the chub were being extremely difficult. Not that they weren’t biting, but were giving those funny-peculiar bites that pull the rod tip round nice and steadily but refuse to be connected with. One of the answers to this problem is to feed some line to the chub before you hit them. It demands a great deal of concentration, for you have to hold a loop of line between butt ring and reel and feed the line to them inch by inch as you feel them tugging. If you get it right you know instinctively when is the right time to strike. This angler was concentrating so hard on those chub, and compiling a fair net of fish for his efforts, he didn’t notice the river steadily rising – at least not until it was lapping round his feet and his bait boxes began to float. Just in time he made a hasty retreat to the bank before he was swept away! That’s real concentration for you.

Experts also work very hard at being expert. The best matchmen are always fishing as close as they can get to match conditions even when they’re not in a match, and the best specialists are always trying to come up with better rigs and baits, and spend a great deal of time simply studying waters. All experts practice all the time, for they know they are lucky anglers and the more they practice the luckier they get.

When I used to fish the occasional match, in the days when Benny Ashurst and Billy Lane ruled the open match circuit, many of the matches I fished were along my local Macclesfield canal. One of our club anglers was one of the finest experts I’ve ever met. He won almost every match he fished, to the point where there was talk of banning him so that someone else would have a chance. Why he won so often was never discovered, although he never hid anything. His bait and tackle were there for anyone to see, and I always took the opportunity to watch him whenever I wasn’t fishing myself.


Richard Walker – said by many to be the most expert angler that ever lived
What came across more than anything was his extreme confidence. He did everything as though there was no doubt whatsoever that it was the right thing to do, and he did it with a casual air that gave the mistaken impression that he was apathetic. But nothing of the kind, he was simply super-efficient, with no wasted movements. In swims I believed he had never fished before he seemed to know instinctively where to cast, and this on a canal where almost every swim looks the same. And as is the case with many expert anglers, his tackle was a disgrace. Floats were pieces of peacock quill, cut down to suit different swims. They were never painted or varnished. All his bits and pieces were seemingly thrown into a box in a great jumble, yet he could put his hand on anything without hesitation. He apparently attached more importance to what he did rather than what he did it with. And who can argue with that?

Experts in angling are very hard to find, particularly in the non-competitive branches of the sport, for expertise cannot be measured in simple numbers of big fish caught. There are too many factors that preclude a sound judgement. It is a much too subjective sport.

But there are expert, non-competitive anglers out there, as well as the expert matchmen. If you get the chance to watch them, then do so. You may not be able to define exactly what they are doing that is any different to what any competent angler does. Not straight away at least. And when you do get an inkling, it probably won’t be as earth-shattering as you may have imagined. But there are enough of those subtle little differences to make all the difference.

So keep watching; some of those subtleties may rub off.

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR