It’s a kind of cultural joke that fishermen are less than completely truthful about the fish they catch. Arms outstretched: “it was this big”; “you should have seen the one that got away, it was huge”. The amusement derived by the non-fishing masses is not entirely based on a myth. I’ve encountered many anglers that either exaggerate their catch or entirely make it up. You can tell this by the dodgy smiles as they tell their tall tales, or by confirmation (or lack of) by a third party. I’ve even heard coarse match anglers make claims so grand as to be obviously fraudulent. Such claims are usually unverifiable of course.
We live in an age of political lies, counter lies and gaslighting. Maybe, then, anglers feel more comfortable in stretching their fellow anglers’ credulity. Lately I’ve been aware how catch rates appear to increasing amongst the fishermen I meet on the bank — catch rates, that is, reported there and then. In an earlier post I commented on meeting a well turned out fly fishermen looking as though he’d wafted down from a fishing tackle website, a digital image made flesh. I see more of these nowadays. Anglers of old generally looked as though they’d just emerged from a compost heap. I put this down to the guiding phenomenon. Those fishermen willing to shell out a few hundred quid on advice will not pinch the pennies over kitting themselves out. Thing is, if you look the part you’ve got to act the part. So the chest-wadered day-ticketer I met the other day, bearded and capped, cheerfully said he’d caught a few trout and grayling, only small ones, he added, just to wear his expertise a little more lightly.
Now on this particular stretch, I get to see the catch returns. Typical catches are one or two fish, or none. Usually if someone gets more, they fall over their landing nets to get in a return — always nice to spread the good news. That day no returns were submitted. Naturally, there may be ways to dredge out a few tiddlers with a nymph in hot August weather if you want your fishing to be hard work with little reward but I suspect this practitioner of the gentle art was being a little artful.
All the professional fishy experts might be adding to the general level of skill out there, but it strikes me they are also adding to expectations which mean ever taller tales. I also wonder — oh infamy! oh sacrilege! — whether a few guides might just be prone to the same lapse in short term memory. After all, they do have a crackerjack reputation to maintain.
Probably not worth anymore asking smartly dressed anglers what they’ve caught. You know the answer beforehand. Next time I might tell you about the dozen double-figure trout I caught on a size 20 fly with 8X line in the space of an hour. Then again I might not.
The Secret Angler 