In 2019 I asked in an article whether anglers really care about the environment, to which my answer was, in most cases, not all that much. I noted that fishermen with the cash are fond of long-distance visits abroad to go fishing, obviously not giving too much thought to the environmental consequences of flying. Some fishing magazines shamefully encourage this, especially Fly Culture and Trout and Salmon, as I’ve noted previously.
The May edition of T&S includes an article by Finlay Wilson about a fishing trip to the Falkland Islands, one of the most distant destinations from the British Isles, about 8000 miles as the jet flies, except there are no direct flights so the journey is even longer. Naturally the piece is full of the usual overblown nonsense. Wilson tells us ‘it was an epic journey, in every sense.’ An epic is a long narrative about some heroic deeds. Does Wilson see himself as a hero wielding a fishing rod while battling the elements? Perhaps he does. Apparently he encountered ‘a dizzying array of birdlife’; and once recovered from the giddiness of seeing all the geese and whatnot, he notes that the Falklands ‘is vast’, although it’s only one fifth the land area of the UK. Most irritating about his writing is his hyphenation of sea trout. We don’t write brown-trout, so why stick a hyphen between sea and trout?
Needless to say, Faraway Fishermen Finlay catches a load of big fish. If he hadn’t we wouldn’t have got the article would we? This raises another environmental question. The sea trout in the rivers are not native. They were stocked many years ago for angling purposes. The native galaxiids, a family of small fish only occurring in the Southern Hemisphere, are threatened by salmonid species, especially trout. Some galaxiid species are close to extinction thanks to trout introductions. Instead of fishing for trout, FW should be taking steps to eradicate them so to preserve the native species, just as he no doubt wishes to preserve the Atlantic salmon.
We can expect in future the usual tears over the fate of Atlantic salmon in the editorials of Trout & Salmon, but of fish that do not take you anywhere near the backing, silence will reign. You may even read pleas to limit temperature rises to keep the rivers cold enough for fish but I don’t expect the editor to ask anglers to limit their fishing to their own country. Anglers care about the environment only so long as it doesn’t affect their fishing.
But T&S has split its personality even further in the July edition. There is a feature about a visit from Donald Trump Jr — yes, that Trump. According to many better authorities than me, Junior, like his infamous father, holds racist and conspiracist views, spread misinformation about Covid, backed the January 2020 insurrection and denies climate change. Just the kind of guy you want to spend a day fishing with. The article will have you reaching for the sick pills; it’s more obsequious than Mark Rutte: His casting was exemplary . . . fly landed with barely a whisper . . . someone who understood the subtleties of the art at the highest level . . . Pass the bucket. Junior goes on to catch five huge stockies, which were probably put in as preparation for his arrival. If you want to read this dreadful article, don’t do it on a full stomach.
Perhaps it’s never occurred to the editor of Trout & Salmon that, should the Junior Donald have his way, before too long there will be no more trout fishing on the River Test or most of the country. The magazine needs to make up its mind. Either it is a publication that supports policies to keep the world fit for fishes and other creatures, including us, or one that publishes the kind of rubbish I’ve cited here.
The Secret Angler 