The Secret Angler

Anglers like stocking. They like complaining even more, and the source of the most complaints is a perceived lack of fish to catch. Whatever might be the reason for low catches, the average fisherman believes the answer is more fish, and then even more. All the coarse fishing clubs I belong to now stock fairly regularly, yet anglers still complain there are not enough fish.

A survey in 2005 by the Environment Agency apparently indicated low roach stocks in the Hampshire Avon, although there was no comparison with figures of waters with ‘normal’ stocks. This was the motivation for the Avon Roach Project (ARP), an undertaking by two fisherman to set up their own hatchery, collect fish eggs from boards placed in the river, rear the hatchlings for two years and then put them back in the river. The object, declared on the website, was to ‘reinstate a self-sustaining population.’ They don’t explain how it was possible to collect roach eggs from a river without a self-sustaining population.

The question is whether this DIY approach to stocking has had any benefit. This year they have stopped collecting spawn because roach catches are, according to the website, now good. No mention of another survey by the EA. So the evidence of success is anecdotal.

The EA apparently supported the hatchery programme, although the EA website publishes nothing about it. But the EA has supported coarse fish stocking elsewhere. This is curious in the light of its policy towards trout and salmon, where after a long history of hatchery rearing, the evidence now suggests stocking from hatcheries is counterproductive. Fish reared artificially are not the same as those growing in the wild; they are not so well adapted to their environment, and hatchery fish going on to breed may actually weaken a population. There is well established science research that indicates this. Hence the EA now insists that trout stocked for sporting purposes are infertile triploids.

Fish variability in natural coarse fisheries is well known. Populations can multiply rapidly one year and collapse the next depending on several environmental factors. Why the Avon roach population dropped so much, if indeed it did, is unknown and was likely a natural event. Perhaps the Avon project has boosted the stock, but it may have just as easily increased naturally. Quality of habitat is far more important, though to give the ARP its due, there has been some work in this area too.

Of course, to question the desirability of the ARP is to invite the reaction you could expect from biting off the head of a 2lb roach. Circumspection is not the typical quality of the angler who believes there are not enough fish. Stocking is always the solution, unless it’s shooting cormorants, or decrying otters. But criticism is always something else to complain about.

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The surface of Redmire Pool has been ruffled again. Now restored (cleaned of silt and fenced against otters), anglers are once more camping on its banks determined to be historical carp fishermen — well, apart from the bolt rigs, hair rigs, boilies, etc. No longer, however, are handwritten letters exchanged between the Hereford enthusiasts; now communications are online in a style of rather lower literary merit. We can safely assume there will be no collections of the Redmire Facebook missives in years to come — “Deffo a brill weekend. Boz”.

The Redmire group on this particular online collector of private data has seen a few ructions since the opening of the season. It seems rather than glimpses of majestic old carp called the Bishop, etc, some immature and distinctly recent carp have been coming to the lines of the Redmire Fan Club, creating some unfavourable forum rumblings in choice language. Apparently the provenance of these carp has been questioned, their genetic purity doubted.

Nigel Hudson (quaint GSC nickname ‘Fennel’) has referred to this on his blog, while Redmire restorer Mark Walsingham (quaint GSC name ‘Skeff’) has been impelled by the criticism to defend his stockings on Facebook and other forums. Walsingham made great play of cleaning out the interloper carp and returning only the pure blood ‘Leneys’, the size of which were kept secret. Given that it is unlikely any of the old fish have survived the long years of decline, this is not such a great secret.

Walsingham decided to supplement the remains of the original stock with mirror carp of the same strain from elsewhere. So the protestations about genetic taint are misplaced, if it makes any sense to talk about pure breeds of carp (the originals from Poland may well have been selectively bred from yet earlier strains). And the average carp angler would hardly be in a position to judge the genetics of the carp they cradle for the camera.

All this furore illustrates what a nonsense the whole Redmire thing has become. Reading a few of the posts on Facebook shows how much bluster is aired in the lake’s name. Pontifications about genes and tradition, squabbles over the relative value of Simmos (an ugly neologism new to me) versus Leneys. It all seems so trivial and artificial. The futility of wishing oneself back to the days of Yates if not Walker is clear. But there is really no escape from the vulgarity of carp fishing modernity, as the image below shows. Looks like a logo for a death metal band. Walker will be spinning in his grave.