The Secret Angler

How do you get a fishing book published by a leading publishing house? Work for the BBC of course, preferably as a TV presenter so your face is known to the public. Familiar faces sell books. A published fishing author once told me that getting your book out there has nothing to do with quality. I don’t write fishing books but I do read a few and for my money I like to read something good.

Both the above conditions seem to apply to The Old Man and the Sand Eel by Will Millard (adventurer, angler and blokey TV personality), published by none other than Penguin. Playing on a Hemingway title, the omens look good. And Penguin presents an impressive collection of quotes from fishing writers: “wonderfully fluent … can enchant and intoxicate” (Chris Yates); “master wordsmith,” according to another; and Tom Fort, no slouch as a writer, finds “The writing is sharp and clever”.

A masterpiece is born?

A famous man of literature once said that the character of a book can be judged from a single paragraph. For those of us who like to dip a toe in the water before diving in, a good many paragraphs are extracted on Google books. The opening chapter, a lament for a missed sand eel record and a panegyric to John Wilson, the late fisherman from the telly, is a heavy read for such a light subject. A writer may choose his subject but he must find a way to draw us into his world. Millard tries to do this with plenty of mundane detail which only slows the pace. His style is the everyman style of one without his own voice, relying on stock expressions and the frequent use of adverbs like absolutely, utterly, and the redundant actively: “They would actively hunt.” Is it possible to hunt inactively?

Despite the lazy prose, descriptions of the garden pond and local wildlife have charm, and observations on the environmental harm of ornamental fish ponds are thoughtful. Going by the subtitle, the core of the book is a homage to his grandfather and father, the guiding anglers in his life. The passages devoted to them are probably the best in the book, eclipsing the author’s main subject, the pursuit of a record fish. There may be better parts of the book not included in Google’s excerpts, but I’ve seen enough.

Millard’s TV programmes on Wales and the consequent newspaper reviews, praising the growing up autobiographical content, will no doubt ensure this book sells well. Autobiography attracts readers in proportion to public exposure.

Technical point: a silverfish is an insect, not a silver fish. And I think all anglers will know why a skimmer gets its name, but maybe that’s for the television watchers.

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.