Ivan Marks – The People’s Champion

This is a dedicated thread for discussing article: Ivan Marks – The People’s Champion

I don't fish matches but Ivan Marks was obviously a very gifted angler and achieved the almost impossible task of making me interested in the techniques involved. I corresponded for a few years with him and always found him generous with advice. Still have some of his floats. I will be buying the book. Looking forward to reading it.

Stu

I met and fished at the side of Ivan in a couple of matches, once on the middle level and another on the forty foot drain just outside Boston in Lincolnshire,another time on the wide welland where he was showing the french champion Jaques tesse some english style angling along with angling journo Colin graham he was as good as they come --or ever did. A real giant of match angling.
Pity the angling match scene that prevailed at the time is no more.

I used to get Angling Times in South Africa in the 70s. There were two articles I never missed, Ivan's and guess who?

Does anyone remember the send-up on Ivan Marks, called: "My Way by Ivor Sparks".

It was very funny.

In point of fact, Ivan didn't write anything; his column was ghosted by my old editor, Peter Collins. Peter told me a great many stories about Ivan; time and mental fragility now prevent me from remembering them. I should have taken some notes, but I was a callow youth.

Peter did say that it was not unusual for Ivan to arrive at his peg, up-end his rod holadall, and spend the next 20 minutes trying to find sufficient sections to make a whole rod, very often mismatched. I did meet Ivan once, at a National, and remember that his team outfit looked as if his dog and perhaps a few cattle had slept on it. But he was a gifted angler, make no mistake.

I was very fortunate to draw next to Ivan in a few matches when he was in his pomp and I were a lot younger.To say the bloke was a genius is a massive understatement.
To put it mildly, I was a reasonable angler in the match league I fished in, yet when next to the man I just couldn't compete. He could I swear catch out of an empty bucket.

I can't speak for other opinions of him as a person but I allways found him to be friendly and helpfull. Being in my middle teens meant I was one of the younger lads on the circuit, yet every time we met he was open and approachable, often passing on tips and even tackle (floats and swingtips) to help me along.

Many many years passed and I bumped into him at a fishing show just the year before he passed away and after chatting for a while he suddenly remembered the now long changed spotty long haired youth who fished next to him on a few occasions, even telling me his winning weight on one particular day and remembering how I struggled for bites on the next peg.

Whether it's old age or just the times, the modern anglers seem so bland compered to the days of Marks, Marlow, Coles, Giles etc

Just seen an obit for Peter Collins. Got a feeling that one or two of Ivan's articles were done by Chris Dawn. Certainly quite a skill to talk to someone for an hour on the phone every week and write a good article from it. Most of the match angler articles/books have been ghost-written over the years with other journalists being Colin Graham (Billy Lane, Kevin Ashurst) and Keith Elliot (Bob Nudd), amongst others.

MarkTheSpark said:

In point of fact, Ivan didn't write anything; his column was ghosted by my old editor, Peter Collins. Peter told me a great many stories about Ivan; time and mental fragility now prevent me from remembering them. I should have taken some notes, but I was a callow youth.

Peter did say that it was not unusual for Ivan to arrive at his peg, up-end his rod holadall, and spend the next 20 minutes trying to find sufficient sections to make a whole rod, very often mismatched. I did meet Ivan once, at a National, and remember that his team outfit looked as if his dog and perhaps a few cattle had slept on it. But he was a gifted angler, make no mistake.

Click to expand...

No sooner had I posted about Peter Collins, who ghosted Ivan Marks' column, than I discover the old boy has died. Peter was my first boss in journalism, and though my 18 months with him had its ups and downs, he taught me a lot about the craft. RIP Pete. Give 'em hell in Heaven.

I have two books by Ivan,I took them to the birmingham nec fishing show
as I knew he would be there, he happly signed both books and we had a good chat about the thousand pegers
that they use to fish, makes me smile nowdays when someone wins the Kamasan 65 pegers,he sadly passed the following year.
He was a real gent but then a lot of them were..not like now days ,
one of the reasons I no longer bother match fishing.

I'd agree 100% with your last sentence Dave.
Following on from my earlier post I've spent the last couple of days looking through my collection of fishing mags from the sixties,seventies and eighties(up until the present) in a sort of nostalgic look back.

What a refreshing change to todays offerings. A wide diversity of species, articles and writers without an advert for guiding or product placement in sight, real pioneers of angling in all its guises. Reading some of the articles it becomes clear just what innivotive and thinking anglers most were.

The likes of Vic Gillings, a young Yates, Kenny Collins, Giles, Barlow, Marlow and Marks etc even a very youthful Kev Ashurst, a pleasure to read about.I even found quite a few articles by or about Ivan including a report on a match at Farnborough Flint pits when he mentions kicking my butt off the next peg (fame eh )
Made me chuckle a bit though seeing the likes of a younger Martin James looking like adonis in shorts that would make Tim Henman blush, Mick Brown with long hair, Keith Elliott before he became famous and the legendary Clive Smith, and reading that some of the woes doing the circuit on the forums today were raising their heads 20 to 30 years ago.

One thing that does stand out though, whether it be the specialists or match anglers of that era they really were a class act.