The Secret Angler

Chris Yates. What a guy! One-time carp record holder, with a fish caught from Redmire to boot; Britain’s favourite fishing writer with several books to his name; most well known member of the Golden Scale Club, a kind of rod-and-line version of the Masons; and the man who popularised, more or less invented, traditional angling with cane rods and centrepin reels. And not to forget A Passion for Angling, the dreamy set of TV programmes of which he was the star. He is the high priest of carp fishing, the de facto head of the Golden Scale priesthood, the man most associated with the holy shrine of carp fishing, Redmire Pool, eclipsing even Dick Walker. Fishers fall at his feet and speak of him in hushed tones. The only other anglers who come close to this level of hero worship are all dead. A living legend indeed.

I suppose it’s not surprising this has happened in our age of celebrity, but it is curious that the habits of teenage girls who dote on music and television stars of dubious merit should have been acquired by smelly old fishermen. Do they stick a poster of Yatesy on their bedroom wall and lie in bed and peer at his image over the mounds of their beer bellies? No they don’t go that far (do they?) but a stack of his books will line their shelves, and more than likely a few cane rods will run along the wall of a special room (Yates fans don’t dump their rods in a corner like the rest of us, although he may well do). Some go even further. They want to be Chris Yates and they dress accordingly, all wax jackets, flat caps and serge trousers. Then there’s the tea and fruitcake, Kelly kettles on the bank, a glass of port or single-malt whisky back home beside the roaring log fire. It’s a jolly old romantic time being a Chris Yates do-alike.

It must be quite odd to be Mr Yates. He seems a likeable man with a taste for the antediluvian yet could not have anticipated the fandom fuelled by his record carp, although clearly he made sure he got publicity for that and subsequently marketed himself well. People who know him hint that he finds irritating the spectacle of Yatesian copycats. Probably he finds them funny too. There is an internet forum dedicated to him, mentioned in the previous Secret Angler post, the TFF, a Chris Yates fan club in all but name. The bloke who runs it has said it’s his dream that one day Yates will ask to join. A studiously offline individual, that is unlikely, though CY has allowed himself to be advertised as an honorary member. A member of your own fan club? That would feel strange.

The notion of a famous angler is to me much like the notion of a famous train spotter or tiddlywinks player. He certainly deserves praise for his books because he is able to write very readable prose even if it all feels a bit light and fluffy. And he has mapped his life the way many would like to — not working too hard, spending plenty of time fishing, doing his own thing, which for him happens to be using oldish fishing tackle. But dressing, walking, talking and stalking carp like the man and  mimicking his habits, doesn’t turn you into him; it just makes for a sorry imitation. The sagest advice ever offered is be yourself.

There’s not much harm in this kind of adulation, other than to risk embarrassment, or cries of ‘get a life.’ Rather it’s the characters of the fans and the cliquey nature of the fan clubs that are so lamentable, perhaps the inevitable outcome of true-belief. I’ll leave that subject to another post.

I quite like Fennel (aka Nigel Hudson) for two reasons. First he upset Mark Walsingham and some of the other Redmire brethren with a video he posted on his website, FennelsPriory. I forget what the video said but it was bland enough comment on the restoration of the lake, yet sufficient to set off Walsingham and the primadonnas who go around with cane rods up their jacksies. Which leads on to the second reason to like Fennel. He had a go at the fervent, cane-toting variety of “traditional angler” in one of his recent journals, at the same time drawing attention to some unsavoury behaviour amongst — shock, horror — members of the Golden Scale Club, a few of whom bullied the younger Fennel for using untraditional tackle, whatever that might be.

All of which prompts the question, what is traditional angling?

Tradition means something long-established, although the word has sometimes been commandeered by all manner of dubious and extreme movements. For angling, traditional is an ephemeral concept which means different things to different people, but Fennel’s criticisms, without direct mention, point to the cane-rod partisans of the Traditional Fisherman’s Forum — “For the discerning cane fisher” to avoid any doubt — of which I am a lurking member, so I have seen at firsthand what goes on there. But this collection of zealots merits its own post and I’ll say no more for now.

Fennel’s contention is that traditional angling has nothing to do with tackle or clothing. Although bamboo rods are widely held to be the tool if not the definition of the traditional angler, they’re not as old, say, as hazel rods, or those of ash, or willow. And the most traditional of traditional fishermen do not use horsehair or silkworm gut for line, or bone for hooks, or knotted cotton nets (illegal now anyway). Edwardian clothing, 1950s rods, 21st century hooks and lines, as Fennel observes. To that one might add 21st century baits; pellets are a favourite among the traditionalists, though boilies are still frowned on. At the centre of the cult traditional is the cane rod, and the true motivation is not a sensitivity to ancient ways and artisanship but a fandom for Chris Yates, noted for his partiality to split cane and tweedy clothes. Carp are the favoured fish because Yates caught the record.

According to Fennel, traditional angling is a ‘mindset,’ which sounds rather American to me (a US psychologist coined the term). He has taken the idea further than most, which he expounds on his website Fennel’s Priory. It sounds like a rehab centre, and perhaps that’s not a bad comparison, as he talks about freeing himself from the eat-work-sleep corporate culture that many of us live in. I know how he feels. His tagline ‘Stop – Unplug – Escape – Enjoy’ is beguiling but reminds me of the hippy mantra Turn on, tune in, drop out; and we know how that ‘lifestyle’ turned out.

The problem with unplugging and dropping out is age-old, or traditional if you like — lack of money. Somehow we have to earn a crust, even if that crust is a modest one. Fennel is candid on his blog and relates some difficult personal times. Recently he has been forced to return to company employment to make a living, his writing not able to generate sufficient income. The notion of being a countryman, an outdoorsman is really a romance. Few people are in this category nowadays: examples are farmers, gardeners (which Fennel once was), road sweepers, all quite arduous occupations and mainly low paid; they certainly don’t wander round the countryside sniffing wild flowers, whittling on sticks and writing pastoral poetry. The wealthy green-welly bourgeoisie in Range Rovers, tattersall shirts and cords love to pose as countryfolk but apart from their big houses beyond the suburbs they are as country as Buckingham Palace gardens. Few now would really want to be traditional countrymen: through the centuries their short lives were characterised by poverty, hunger and fear. So what does Fennel mean by a ‘natural life’? One that ‘helps us to escape, find freedom and have adventures,’ he says, redolent of Enid Blyton. The closest I can imagine to his idea of a natural life is one in which I’d have a secure income and only need to work to satisfy my own interests and fill in the time between fishing (I wouldn’t want to fish every day). I have met at least one person who inherited enough to live this life. Alas, I’m not in that position.

Fennel’s blog is a gentle meandering read, more interesting than most blogs about fishing. He admits he is in thrall to Chris Yates too, and Bernard Venables gave his website, his outlook, its name. This especially shows in some of his writing, the habit of telling us where he sits with notepad — at his desk, under a tree, barefoot on the lawn. There is inevitably an unrealism in the dreams of nature escape yet perhaps it is worth striving for; Fennel strives better than most and his reflections are engaging, avoiding the excesses that characterised the late Venables style in his journey back to the Garden. Maybe Fennel will move away from the Yatesian view, which seems slightly schoolboy to me, and give us more of his heretical thoughts, provided he can weather his time under canvas, somewhere in Dorset.

Where does this leave the traditional fisherman? If we consider that people in the ancient world fished with rod and line, then all angling is traditional, so there is no need for distinctions. Some bamboo professors, however, believe they are more traditional than others. A fancy has become a faith, and the faithful have a habit of turning on each other.