The Secret Angler

Two articles in Fallon’s Angler 14 caught my attention. One phrase in particular jumped out: ‘… most fishing books are not very good …’. Tom Fort probably understates the matter. Many are pretty bad in my opinion. Are publishers part of the cause? The phenomenon of the short print run with a handful of ‘special edition’ leather-bound copies has appeared in recent years. No matter how bad the book, these leather editions, usually purchased by the author and family and friends, ensure it turns a profit. The remaining cloth copies sell to a few more, a fair chunk bought up by dealers who get the author to sign each one. This immediately institutes a rarity, thus pushing up the price, no matter how worthless the content. It’s a neat commercial trick but it doesn’t add much to the world of angling literature; on the contrary it is a form of vanity publishing and a waste of paper.

Merlin Unwin’s views in the second article (written by Dominic Garnett) are therefore interesting to someone who, like me, finds nearly all new fishing books uncompelling. According to Unwin, a book needs to have ‘a distinct theme,’ ‘a fresh angle and something new or different to say.’ This got me wondering what there is new to say in a fishing book. Instructional books may have something different to offer, some technique, some method that no one has ever come across, but most are just rehashes of stuff anglers have been doing for years. With the story kind of book, the memoir, the accounts of fishing days and ways, what new themes are there? Are they not all just collections, tales of days fishing with discursions on the weather, personal feelings, friends and so on? Consider some of the major fishing books of the past. Sheringham’s best were a collection of disparate essays on the different types of fishing he did; only one stuck to trout. Ransome collected a broad assortment of his newspaper columns into Rod and Line. More recently Tom Fort did something similar in The Far from Compleat Angler. The best-selling fishing writer today, John Gierach, repeats his theme of fly fishing alone or with friends in every book, a subject also covered by many other authors in America. Where is the distinctive theme, where is the ‘angle’ in any of these?

Of course there isn’t one. What marks all these books out is the quality of the writing, the uniqueness of the author’s mind. At heart they are just accounts of fishing trips; some might be devoted to one species, or one river, but this barely amounts to a theme. I took a look at the fishing books published by Unwin to see if I could pick out the fresh angles in those. On the instructional side, there are books on knots, fly casting, fly tying … Nothing especially new there; there are dozens of books on those subjects, presented in all sorts of ways and all much of a muchness. The memoir books are led by a couple of BB reprints. Confessions of a Carp Fisher does have a species theme I suppose, but Fisherman’s Bedside Book is an anthology of various writers. Chris Yates’s Secret Carp is focused on a day beside the water and talks about tea quite a bit — a theme of sorts. Falling in Again is really no more than another collection of fishing tales, it’s angle, if you can call it that, the alternation between childhood and adulthood reminiscences, although that pairing peters out before the end of the book. Another fishing (and shooting) author in the Merlin Unwin fold is Laurence Catlow. The Healing Stream is different in that Catlow opens up his problems of mental illness. It’s as much autobiography as a fishing book, which is perhaps relatively unusual but, from reading some of it, not very interesting. Confessions of a Shooting Man, obviously not about fishing, is a diary (not an original idea) in which he expresses forthright opinions, some reactionary. Maybe that amounts to a theme but not necessarily to a good read.

In the article Unwin mentions a recent publication about bass fishing by James Batty. If it has a theme it is again a species — bass of course. It does have the unusual format of instructional sections in standard font, with descriptions of fishing in italics. I don’t see the point of this; for one, large sections in italics are annoying, and it seems designed to encourage readers to skip passages. But at least the writing is better than many fishing books. It’s written in a journalistic style with a tell-it-like-it-is flavour and is quite readable, although the dogmatic tone may become irksome. Is the book’s strength its slender theme or its readability?

In the past a few editors of fishing magazines have talked to me about angles in articles. I think there is too much of the old fashioned journalist in this. A good fishing book, any book in fact, is good because of the writing, not any theme it may contrive to inhabit. Readers accept that a fishing book is about fishing and that’s that. What we want to read is a book of genuine interest, a book that is written by someone who can write and who has a mind worth knowing. If publishers looked for this instead of some artificial motive we might get a few better books. The true theme is the writer behind the words. Most fishing books really are not very good, and perhaps the publishers deserve some of the blame.

‘My, what big teeth you have Grandmama.’
‘All the better to pose for publicity photographs with.’

Something like that comes to mind every time I see a snap of John Langridge, invariably displaying his Mount Rushmore gnashers in a monumental grin. Or is it a grimace? I’ve never seen a picture of him in mildly amused mood, nor in pensive contemplation, nor impassive, nor gloomy. I once saw him in real life, signing copies of one of his books at a game fair, wearing an identical expression. He was out-Cheshire catting the Cheshire cat even then. I conclude his grin is permanent. Must be a happy guy.

He has written a few books, all published by Medlar Press. The latest, due soon, is A Line Lost in Time. It must be difficult to come up with a title for a new fishing book now that so many have been written but this does feel a bit portentous. The book is a collection of globe-trotting fishing stories, so maybe A Tackle Bag Lost by an Airline would fit the subject matter. Since the book is not yet published I cannot get hold of a copy. Helpfully Medlar have printed an extract on its website, so applying the principle that a paragraph is a window into the complete book, I offer this appraisal.

According to Medlar’s blurb, Langridge has seafaring ancestors ‘lost in the mists of time,’ etc. These apparently are the motivation for the book, with some fishing along the way. Whether these are an excuse for some romance or more central to the narrative we’ll have to see. Advertising the book with a travel bag of clichés doesn’t persuade me to place an order. I admit I am not a fan of Langridge’s writing. Many were his articles in Waterlog I struggled to finish, and often didn’t, thanks to the tiresome cosiness of his writing.

It’s not easy to define but you recognise it straight away. Those phrases that are kept handy when you can’t be bothered to think too long about what you’re saying. He sees ‘delicate carvings,’ and at ‘the very edge of the sea,’ there are ‘small fish teeming in the shallows’. Stuff happens quickly — ‘I was quickly overwhelmed’, ‘I quickly found’, ‘quick formalities’. Words like delightful and excitement slide through his sentences with ease born of frequent use. I won’t quote any more, you get the idea. The pop style that bears a thousand fishing articles is relentless and I can’t manage a thousand words of it, let alone an entire book. I’ll pass this one over. A pity because a travelogue of fishing (overlooking the carbon addition to the atmosphere) is potentially very interesting. If you read the book, you might like to offer your view in the comments below.