The Secret Angler

The purpose of this blog is to provide criticism and a dissenting view where merited. There is no point praising what has already been praised elsewhere. But neither should it be unrelenting condemnation (there will be sufficient time for that in future). As we come up to Christmas, let us look at something good, the latest Fallon’s Angler film, Sturgeon Hunter.

Fishing films are two-a-penny on Youtube, some not bad, most quite dull: there is more to an angling film than catching fish, to co-opt a familiar phrase. Sturgeon Hunter, filmed by Nick Fallowfield-Cooper, written and narrated by Garrett Fallon, is a 17-minute story of their trip to the Fraser River in Canada to fish for the white sturgeon, a species of ancient origin that grows to immense size. For those who like to see action, there is plenty of rod-bending excitement along the way, and Garrett fulfils his ambition of capturing a fish great enough to tip the scales against him. Backbreaking fishing.

There are some attractive scenic shots, a little blue-tinged, probably the limitations of a small camera. The strength of the film is Fallon’s narrative. His reflective commentary evokes the long history of the river and its local tribes; the First Nations man he met explained the indigenous peoples’ spiritual bond to the river and land, a permanence many fishermen can understand.

Every good film has a memorable moment; Sturgeon Hunter’s comes at the end when a First Nations woman wades in to see and touch the last fish they catch, believing it to be the one that will carry away her soul when she dies. To the soulful music of a wooden flute they both fade into their element.

Seeing the Luke Jennings story, Undercurrent, on the Fallon’s Angler website reminded me of his book Blood Knots, a copy of which sits on my bookshelf on the recommendation of someone whose advice, I felt, should be given due weight. I don’t often take much notice of other people’s views on fishing books because often I find I don’t share them. Too many turn out to be lumpy dull reads. But then Jennings is a professional journalist and should know how to write.

The book is not bad, though it’s trying to be a number of things — a biography of his schooldays, his father, and a memoir of his school friend, Robert Nairac, a risk-taking adventurer who joined the Army and met an unpleasant end. Interspersed with all this is some fishing. The Nairac story is the most interesting aspect of the book but I had got it for the fishing content. This left me unimpressed. There is nothing obviously wrong with the writing; the description of the fishing is just unaccountably flat. Perhaps it’s all too commonplace, or the interleaved biography interrupts too much. I find it hard to decide. I remember hearing Blood Knots serialised on the radio. The multiple human interest in the book would no doubt have attracted the producer; and being a journalist with connections would have helped I’m sure.

Undercurrent left me on the bank too. The clipped writing, tenses shifting between past and present, is not a style that appeals to me and doesn’t build interest or suspense in what is supposed to be a kind of ghost story. Unfortunately the tale, in which the protagonist’s childhood self is the ‘ghost’, has been done before, notably by BB, and probably by many other writers.