The Secret Angler

About 11 years ago I published my last fishing article, I think in one of the fly fishing monthlies now defunct. As I explained in an earlier post, I gave it up because the money was poor and I had to chase editors to give me a decision. Another reason was a sneaking feeling that the articles were a bit boring because I got bored writing them. So I have sympathy with Tom Fort’s view, expressed in Fallon’s Angler 18, that it’s better to go fishing than write about it. He believes all fishing writers soon run out of things to say.

I’m not sure this is the reason most fishing writing, as Tom finds, is no good. It’s true there is only so much to be said about fishing, especially in those articles on technical matters which really are tedious in their repetitiveness. With the literary or one-with-nature kind of article, the problem is not necessarily because they’re full of description. The recognisable examples he gives — ‘protesting reels’, ‘water still as glass’, etc — are awful because they are hackneyed. They’re borrowed phrases from hundreds of other fishing articles.

Thinking about popular fishing authors, the one that comes to mind is Chris Yates, who has appeared in every issue of Fallon’s. He’s been writing his epistles from the waterside for many years. Despite the repetition they are generally a good read and most of us don’t mind reading about another crucian landed, or another carp ‘ghosting’ past. Sheringham, Tom Fort’s favourite author, covers similar ground in many of the essays that make up his books, yet they are a fine read because they were written from within himself, and he knew how to turn a sentence. In the annals of fishing articles, very few have known how to do that.

Do new young writers bring something fresh? Maybe, and maybe not, especially if they fashion their style on older writers, which most do. I’m not convinced that youth offers that much different, though there are always exceptions. I’d rather read the old lags like Tom Fort himself. I used to read with enjoyment his pieces in the Financial Times, not a paper widely read, I suspect, by many anglers. The FT angling readers were most likely the kind whose fishing was limited to a week after salmon in Scotland each year, provided it didn’t interfere with the grouse season. The problem with an angling column in the broadsheets is the lack of interested readers. Keith Elliot’s pieces in The Independent were written mainly for a wider readership. There’s no fishing column in the FT now.

Honesty is rare nowadays but honesty is what we get in Tom Fort’s article. Who can get away with pointing out that many anglers are illiterate, or semi-literate, incurably incompetent and stupid? Or that their motive is gain? Or that most anglers can’t write for toffee? Tom Fort, apparently. And he’s not troubled that some lightweight editor might consider him too ‘negative’ (I’ve had that experience) or too offensive. My kind of writer!

I expect the traditional fishing article replete with rod-bending action and regurgitations will continue to fill the pages of most fishing publications. Perhaps there is an opening for me once more:

The rod hooped over and the reel protested loudly as the fish made its bid for freedom …

Interested editors may contact me at the link above.

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I’ve just bought a copy of the Angling Times, the first for many years. It comes with a ‘free carp mag’ and a banner proclaiming that it’s ‘ALL-NEW’. What the newness is I’m not sure because it looks little different to the last copy I read, some time ago I admit: lots of pictures and short paragraphs. We don’t get much idea from the editorial, which is a collection of the old clichés — ‘tactical tips’, ‘top experts’, ‘in-depth, honest tackle reviews’ and so on.

The AT has been around since 1953 and used to be presented as an anglers’ newspaper. Early copies I’ve seen contained a lot more of interest and longer articles by luminaries like Dick Walker. Now it is published in a magazine format, following Angler’s Mail which converted long ago, and filled with photos of grinning (or gurning) fishermen thrusting fish at the camera, mainly carp. Some stare intently at their catch as though the fish has taken control of their minds.

Articles are mostly very short and contain the repetitive stuff of a thousand others. Their main object is to tell readers how to ‘bag up’ using the latest kit (plenty of product placement), mostly poles with a stack of ancillaries.  The ‘top experts’, most of whom are unknown to me, tell readers how to catch a lot of fish with numerous photographs of fish and bits of tackle; and just to show how expert they are, they dress in uniforms, blue or black the favourite livery. Readers will find these guides very familiar because they nearly all say the same sort of thing. I often wonder whether these articles are mainly written by staff writers with a few stock methods to hand — the pole, the waggler, the feeder cover 99%.

One change is the introduction of pellets, an environmentally damaging bait as these are manufactured from fishmeal, a product of industrial (over)fishing. Pellets have given rise to a new item of tackle, a slab of metal unimaginatively called the ‘method’ feeder to which a handful of sticky pellets is moulded. The whole lot is cast out with a loud splosh. The commercial fisheries, featured regularly, are also implicated: the heavily stocked carp are reared on the same pellets. On top, the issue came wrapped in non-degradable plastic. The Angling Times should be doing better.

The effusive piece on the ARP is a matter of concern. There is no evidence beyond the uninformed say-so of anglers to suggest it was any more than a self-flattering waste of time by the two individuals who decided to set up their own breeding programme. Now, according to the AT, it is to be extended to other rivers, although there is no reason to believe they need stocking. This kind of ignorant messing about with fisheries should not be tolerated. Again, Angling Times ought to know better.

I have only passing interest in carp fishing and find it best to avoid lakes with carp anglers, who tend to cast very large and splashy objects around just as the real fish are starting to bite. But I looked through the free carp magazine which, like the AT, is full of fish portraits, this time of fat ugly carp with captors of no more pleasing appearance. It’s a ‘rigs special’ and we are given descriptions of six rigs, all consisting of a hair rig hook and heavy weight. Apart from one with a float, they are much the same. The other articles are also technical expositions of how to find and catch carp without really saying anything beyond the obvious or questionable.

The merit of Angling Times and its offshoots is the visions of fish and fishing expertise it dangles in front of readers’ eyes. When you look at the fishy images, the tackle, the underwater diagrams of hypothetical rivers and lakes, it is easy to think yourself into a state of comfortable fish-catching competence. This keeps you going until the reality of the waterside intrudes once more. The Angling Times, more than ever, survives on clichés and improbabilities; even the experts are fooled into believing their own sophistry, as you will hear time and again on the bank.

Still, some of the photos of the kiddies are cute, and it’s something that the Kingfisher Guild is still going, even if it’s now called a club. Oh for another Dick Walker. But there would be no readership for him.

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