Tuesday, 6 May 2008
The Tenth Cast
Last week (April 29th) we had the great honour of being the first place where you could read an extract from Chris Yates forthcoming book "Out Of The Blue". Well, it just got better. Last night Chris's son Will sent through two brilliant illustrations that he has done for the book. I've added them to the post. Go look..
Monday, 5 May 2008
Sweete Themmes! Runne Softly, Till I End My Song.*
As mentioned here previously Andrew, Robin & I are working on a book. It will be called Caught By The River and it’s a collection of writings on British rivers. We’ll keep you posted on the progress.
With this in mind, the recent publication of "Downstream" , a book by Tom Fort of a journey he made down the river Trent, was of some interest to me. The Trent was “my” river. I was born on it’s banks, a few miles outside of Nottingham and spent a lot of time on it as a kid, either fishing or watching football. Great football. Brian Clough & Peter Taylor football.
Anyway, the Trent means something to me, but sadly not for Tom. He tries his best – he writes very well and if I’m honest, the odds of him finding revelation ain’t great - but ultimately he chose the wrong river. He would have preferred to have written about his local river, the Thames, but “…seriously doubted if I could do anything different from those who had gone before”. He then mentions a book called “Sweet Thames, Run Softly” by someone called Robert Gibbings. I’d heard of neither book nor author but I liked the title so I tracked a copy down. Thank you Tom Fort, it’s a lovely book.
First published in 1940 and illustrated throughout with engravings by the author, it tells the story of a trip he made along the Thames: “…it occurred to me that it might be fun to explore the river Thames, in whose valley I had lived for fifteen years.” “It would be restful, too, for I planned to float down-stream at the river’s own pace, and to look for nothing but what I might see as I moved along , consigning all guide books to the devil…”
It’s observational, anecdotal and opinionated. He was definitely somewhat eccentric and it reads all the better for it. Here’s an extract;
“Now the celandines are sparkling in the marshes, and pools in the still flooded fields shine blue. The redshanks are whistling, the peewits are tumbling, and yellow wagtails trip along the muddy borders of the stream, their breasts as brilliant as the kingcups. The sand-martins, too, whirling like leaves in a gale, advertise their return, while high up among the purple blossoms of the elm-trees the young rooks have already broken their shells. Nearer to earth the poplars wave their catkins, and the willows and sallows regale the years first broods of insect life.
The sap is rising. Each day our world turns further towards the sun. All the energy held in bondage during the winter is being released. To quote an anonymous writer: “Week by week the crops swallow up the wild life of the open countryside, while the woods and hedges draw veil after veil over the doings of the small things which they shelter, and wherever we go a hundred eyes peep and a hundred ears listen, of creatures that we cannot see or hear at all.”
“If we would glimpse behind that veil we must forget those fanatics who think that walking at less than four miles an hour is a sign of laziness or physical decay. Those are the people who, after an excursion into the country, spend their evenings at a cinema because they have seen nothing during the day with which to occupy their thoughts. We must learn to walk slowly, so that we have time to see; we must learn to tread quietly, so that we do not cause alarm; above all, we must think peace.”
All of my reading at present is with our book in mind, looking for ideas or inspirations, contributions or inclusions, so after I finish “My Fishing Days And Ways”, I’m back on to Robert Gibbings for “Coming Down The Wye” and then “Lovely Is The Lee”.
Which means that the new Tim Winton novel will just have to wait (let's hope that it's up there with "The Turning" and therefore worth the wait). (JB)
*SPENSER, Prothalamion
With this in mind, the recent publication of "Downstream" , a book by Tom Fort of a journey he made down the river Trent, was of some interest to me. The Trent was “my” river. I was born on it’s banks, a few miles outside of Nottingham and spent a lot of time on it as a kid, either fishing or watching football. Great football. Brian Clough & Peter Taylor football.
Anyway, the Trent means something to me, but sadly not for Tom. He tries his best – he writes very well and if I’m honest, the odds of him finding revelation ain’t great - but ultimately he chose the wrong river. He would have preferred to have written about his local river, the Thames, but “…seriously doubted if I could do anything different from those who had gone before”. He then mentions a book called “Sweet Thames, Run Softly” by someone called Robert Gibbings. I’d heard of neither book nor author but I liked the title so I tracked a copy down. Thank you Tom Fort, it’s a lovely book.
First published in 1940 and illustrated throughout with engravings by the author, it tells the story of a trip he made along the Thames: “…it occurred to me that it might be fun to explore the river Thames, in whose valley I had lived for fifteen years.” “It would be restful, too, for I planned to float down-stream at the river’s own pace, and to look for nothing but what I might see as I moved along , consigning all guide books to the devil…”
It’s observational, anecdotal and opinionated. He was definitely somewhat eccentric and it reads all the better for it. Here’s an extract;
“Now the celandines are sparkling in the marshes, and pools in the still flooded fields shine blue. The redshanks are whistling, the peewits are tumbling, and yellow wagtails trip along the muddy borders of the stream, their breasts as brilliant as the kingcups. The sand-martins, too, whirling like leaves in a gale, advertise their return, while high up among the purple blossoms of the elm-trees the young rooks have already broken their shells. Nearer to earth the poplars wave their catkins, and the willows and sallows regale the years first broods of insect life.
The sap is rising. Each day our world turns further towards the sun. All the energy held in bondage during the winter is being released. To quote an anonymous writer: “Week by week the crops swallow up the wild life of the open countryside, while the woods and hedges draw veil after veil over the doings of the small things which they shelter, and wherever we go a hundred eyes peep and a hundred ears listen, of creatures that we cannot see or hear at all.”
“If we would glimpse behind that veil we must forget those fanatics who think that walking at less than four miles an hour is a sign of laziness or physical decay. Those are the people who, after an excursion into the country, spend their evenings at a cinema because they have seen nothing during the day with which to occupy their thoughts. We must learn to walk slowly, so that we have time to see; we must learn to tread quietly, so that we do not cause alarm; above all, we must think peace.”
All of my reading at present is with our book in mind, looking for ideas or inspirations, contributions or inclusions, so after I finish “My Fishing Days And Ways”, I’m back on to Robert Gibbings for “Coming Down The Wye” and then “Lovely Is The Lee”.
Which means that the new Tim Winton novel will just have to wait (let's hope that it's up there with "The Turning" and therefore worth the wait). (JB)
*SPENSER, Prothalamion
Saturday, 3 May 2008
Don't Judge A Brook By It's Cover
Chris Yates learns that big fish can lurk in the most unexpected places (from today's Telegraph)
After a few seasons watching the habits of freshwater fish, it becomes less of a puzzle guessing where a particular species might lie on a given day.
I find that wild fish move in mysterious ways. If I'm looking for perch, for instance, and the river is running high, I will fish the quiet, deep pools on the inside of bends or below sunken trees. When the river is low and clear and I am hoping for a chub, I'll look for a steady, streamy run between reed or weed beds, where small groups of these black-tailed fish are often visible, holding station, just under the surface. Big, powerful barbel prefer strong, deepish runs, especially if there is a roof over their heads in the form of an overhanging willow. Like roach, dace and bream, these are shoal fish, which makes them easier to locate than the more solitary trout and pike; but whatever species I'm after, if I start hankering after a monster, I have to remind myself that monsters move in mysterious ways. Furthermore, they often inhabit places where even the most experienced angler would never think to look.
I had my eyes opened when I went for a walk along a tiny tributary of the River Loddon - which is a small stream, anyway - looking for wild brown trout. My companion, Edward Barder, who had been exploring the water over the previous few years, pointed out a little scoop in a very ordinary stretch of shallows where, not long previously, he had seen a fish that looked, in that bath-sized pool, like a salmon.
Apart from the overhanging trees, which gave a bit of cover, I would never have imagined it as a likely spot for a big fish. Yet the "salmon" proved to be a tremendous trout. On a mayfly of his own tying, Edward hooked it. After a spectacular battle, he landed it: a wild fish of 5lb 4oz, the sort of creature that most fly-fishers can only dream about.
On the day we were hunting for big fish, we didn't see anything monstrous, but I watched Edward stalk a canny three-pounder, which looked enormous in a bottleneck of a glide beneath an old footbridge. The bridge seemed superfluous, as I could almost have stepped across to the far bank, but the fish obviously appreciated it and would not venture out of its shadow, even when a fat, juicy mayfly floated the merest tail flick away in the sunlight. Edward had to cast his artificial fly from below, trying to get it through the bridge so that it landed lightly on the surface before drifting back downstream.
This may sound straight forward; but the wooden crossbeam was only about two feet above the water and he was up to his armpits in reeds, 30 feet along the bank. It was amazing that he managed it several times - and at each attempt the trout ignored him. Edward gave up in the end and we went on upstream until we came to a little hollow of a pool below a leaning willow. Nothing was visible when we crept up to it, but Edward spotted something beneath the surface just upstream of the tree. It was another good fish, which swayed in the current, showing its neb (its nose) every time it rose to take a mayfly.
Generous as ever, Edward said it was my turn for a cast, even though he had seen the trout first. I crawled through the long grass, but could not get too close because the fish was in a little open glide between reeds, and if I could see him, he could see me. I was using my featherweight cane seven-footer, which has a lovely action, even if I don't. As I extended the line, I realised this was a tricky cast - not as tricky as Edward's under-the-bridge effort, but tricky enough for someone who fishes the fly for only a few days each year. My first attempt sent my fly into the reeds; the next put it into the trailing bough of an alder, upstream of the fish. Finally I got the thing to land almost perfectly. It floated down over the quivering greyish shape in midstream - which didn't rise for it. I was wondering whether I could ever repeat such a good throw, when the fish turned and snatched the fly just before it swept under the willow. The line tightened. I'd got him!
The rod went into a sharp curve as my trout dived, circled and buried itself beneath the leaning tree. I presumed the game was over as soon as it had begun, but steady pressure gradually brought a response and, to my relief, the fish came free, dropping down into the deep pool next to us. I was convinced it was going to launch itself into the dense reeds downstream, but as it circled the pool, Edward said I should keep the pressure as steady as possible while he waited with the net. After a minute or two, as the trout made a slightly slower pass, close to the surface, my gillie leaned forward and scooped him expertly out.
It was a lovely golden 2½lb wildie, with just a few speckles and a broad square tail. He went back in the stream to grow into a five-pounder.
After a few seasons watching the habits of freshwater fish, it becomes less of a puzzle guessing where a particular species might lie on a given day.
I find that wild fish move in mysterious ways. If I'm looking for perch, for instance, and the river is running high, I will fish the quiet, deep pools on the inside of bends or below sunken trees. When the river is low and clear and I am hoping for a chub, I'll look for a steady, streamy run between reed or weed beds, where small groups of these black-tailed fish are often visible, holding station, just under the surface. Big, powerful barbel prefer strong, deepish runs, especially if there is a roof over their heads in the form of an overhanging willow. Like roach, dace and bream, these are shoal fish, which makes them easier to locate than the more solitary trout and pike; but whatever species I'm after, if I start hankering after a monster, I have to remind myself that monsters move in mysterious ways. Furthermore, they often inhabit places where even the most experienced angler would never think to look.
I had my eyes opened when I went for a walk along a tiny tributary of the River Loddon - which is a small stream, anyway - looking for wild brown trout. My companion, Edward Barder, who had been exploring the water over the previous few years, pointed out a little scoop in a very ordinary stretch of shallows where, not long previously, he had seen a fish that looked, in that bath-sized pool, like a salmon.
Apart from the overhanging trees, which gave a bit of cover, I would never have imagined it as a likely spot for a big fish. Yet the "salmon" proved to be a tremendous trout. On a mayfly of his own tying, Edward hooked it. After a spectacular battle, he landed it: a wild fish of 5lb 4oz, the sort of creature that most fly-fishers can only dream about.
On the day we were hunting for big fish, we didn't see anything monstrous, but I watched Edward stalk a canny three-pounder, which looked enormous in a bottleneck of a glide beneath an old footbridge. The bridge seemed superfluous, as I could almost have stepped across to the far bank, but the fish obviously appreciated it and would not venture out of its shadow, even when a fat, juicy mayfly floated the merest tail flick away in the sunlight. Edward had to cast his artificial fly from below, trying to get it through the bridge so that it landed lightly on the surface before drifting back downstream.
This may sound straight forward; but the wooden crossbeam was only about two feet above the water and he was up to his armpits in reeds, 30 feet along the bank. It was amazing that he managed it several times - and at each attempt the trout ignored him. Edward gave up in the end and we went on upstream until we came to a little hollow of a pool below a leaning willow. Nothing was visible when we crept up to it, but Edward spotted something beneath the surface just upstream of the tree. It was another good fish, which swayed in the current, showing its neb (its nose) every time it rose to take a mayfly.
Generous as ever, Edward said it was my turn for a cast, even though he had seen the trout first. I crawled through the long grass, but could not get too close because the fish was in a little open glide between reeds, and if I could see him, he could see me. I was using my featherweight cane seven-footer, which has a lovely action, even if I don't. As I extended the line, I realised this was a tricky cast - not as tricky as Edward's under-the-bridge effort, but tricky enough for someone who fishes the fly for only a few days each year. My first attempt sent my fly into the reeds; the next put it into the trailing bough of an alder, upstream of the fish. Finally I got the thing to land almost perfectly. It floated down over the quivering greyish shape in midstream - which didn't rise for it. I was wondering whether I could ever repeat such a good throw, when the fish turned and snatched the fly just before it swept under the willow. The line tightened. I'd got him!
The rod went into a sharp curve as my trout dived, circled and buried itself beneath the leaning tree. I presumed the game was over as soon as it had begun, but steady pressure gradually brought a response and, to my relief, the fish came free, dropping down into the deep pool next to us. I was convinced it was going to launch itself into the dense reeds downstream, but as it circled the pool, Edward said I should keep the pressure as steady as possible while he waited with the net. After a minute or two, as the trout made a slightly slower pass, close to the surface, my gillie leaned forward and scooped him expertly out.
It was a lovely golden 2½lb wildie, with just a few speckles and a broad square tail. He went back in the stream to grow into a five-pounder.
Tuesday, 29 April 2008
Pleasures Of...
April
Bon Iver "For Emma, Forever Ago" (4AD)
Paul Kingsnorth "Real England"
The Encyclopedia Of Wales
Death Cab For Cutie "I Will Possess Your Heart"
Ian Vince & Dan Kieran "Three Men In A Float"
Flight Of The Conchords album on Sub Pop
Portishead "Third" (esp "The Rip" - record of the year or too early to declare?) and live at Brixton Academy - amazing
The Stone Roses "Blood On The Turntable"
Erykah Badu "Part One (4th World War)"
Discovering the wonderful words and pictures of Robert Gibbings
The Year Of Magical Thinking
"Meetings With Remarkable Trees" by Thomas Pakenham
"Napolean At Waterloo" by White Hinterland
"The Orphanage"
the original soundtrack recording for "The Sweet Smell Of Success"
'How To Be Idle' Tom Hodgkinson
'The Deepening Pool' Chris Yates
The Dog & Duck, Soho (for its wonderful rotation of great real ales)
The photography of Martin Parr
The Sea Perch
Hi Jeff,
At last, a piece from my book for CBTR! Hope you approve.(Book - Out of the Blue - to be published early September.)
There was a great sound and music piece on Radio 3 last night by Chris Woods. Listening to the river was a 20 minute description of life on the River Medway. It had some lovely moments. Go to Late Junction's web site; Wed 23rd April. The river piece is about 45 minutes into the 110 minute programme. I've started writing in the Weekend Telegraph again, now I've finished my book. The 1st article should be going in a week on Saturday - I think (in the weekend section). Its about monster brownies on the Lodden. I'd rather write for the weekend Guardian, but they said they weren't sure they had space for fishing related articles - and the Telegraph pay much better!
Hope you're well and enjoying the spring. First swallows arrived a day late here (20th). No cuckoo or nightingale yet. But a red kite and a peregrine flew right over the garden on the day I finished my book. And my old Toyota turned 200000 miles. Good omens, I presume.
All good fishes,
Chris.
TENTH CAST
THE SEA PERCH
A tidal river introduced me to the bass, and though it was a long time ago, and I was only sixteen, the encounter created a little turn in my path that would inevitably lead me to where I am today. Of all the dozens of Piscean species that have fascinated me over the years, only four had actually taken up residence in my dreams; but now, after half a lifetime, the bass has finally joined them.
As I mentioned before, the Latin name for the European sea bass is Decentrachus labrax, which is almost as impressive as the name of the family of fishes to which it belongs: the Serranidae. The Serranidae sound like like a group of beings, half fish, half elf, who probably inhabit the forests of sea kelp around our more remote shorelines. But with each tide they send in their armies of bass to invade the estuaries, advancing upriver, spying out the land, because, one day, they know it will all be sea again.
Isaak Walton, writing in the 17th Century, referred to bass as the sea perch, and this old English name also appeared in my childhood bible, The Observer’s Book of Freshwater Fish. I used to keep this book in the pocket of my school blazer so I could maintain a connection with my preferred reality, using the sacred images in the colour plates to keep me from despair during lessons. Especially maths lessons. The illustration of ‘the Bass or Sea Perch’ – all spectral blue and silver – shared a double page spread with the freshwater perch – all earthy greens and russets. I was familiar with the latter because of the shoals of small ones in the village pond, but, in my beginning, I knew nothing about the former and wondered what it was doing in a book about freshwater species until I read that it could exist as happily in an estuary as in the sea, and, as a juvenile, would ascend miles upstream to feed. So, when I first cast into what I definitely knew to be a tidal river, I fished for bass.
The river was the Blythe in Suffolk, near the harbour, just half a mile from the sea, where Nick and I insisted we be abandoned for the day while our parents explored the nearby town of Southwold. Upstream of us was a broad reedy lagoon which gradually narrowed into the deep straight channel that ran down past us and beyond the timber pilings and black clapboard harbour buildings towards the Wash. The water in front of us was dark and turbulent, with the tide running strongly and the river rapidly reversing. It seemed we had arrived at a propitious moment for surely, as the bible said; great shoals of bass would be riding in on the tidal current.
I told Nick we were bound to catch something, but he stared into the greyish depths and said he didn’t rate our chances. For a start we didn’t have any proper bass bait – no prawns, sand eels or mackerel strip, only bread, which was probably not a favourite item of diet. However, the bible said that ‘… bass are occasionally caught using a shining bait;’ and we had shining baits. In our tackle bags we had a small collection of metal lures which we’d acquired over the years, not for any specific purpose, but because we liked the look of them. Now Nick tied on something in silver and blue while I chose a gold Kilko spoon with red diagonals; and as the Blythe continued to rise we began to fish.
For a while we worked our lures through the quieter water close in, thinking it too wild in midstream, but after a few minutes I made a long cast across river and, after waiting a moment for the spinner to sink, began a slow retieve. I could feel the faint buzzing sensation along the line as the lure came back through the current – and then something pounced making the rod tip shake. For a second I couldn’t believe it was a fish. Perhaps I’d simply hooked a piece of jetsamming driftwood. But then the rod swooped violently over and the reel began to sing a song that I’d never heard before. Until that moment, no fish had ever taken more than a yard or two of line from me, mainly because I used strong tackle and screwed my reel down tight. But because I was fishing an open river with no visible snags, I was using much lighter gear than normal and had wisely slackened the clutch before I cast.
Hearing the continuous screeching, Nick came running over, looked up at the rod and said: ‘Is it really a fish?’
‘Of course it is!’
Then he ran away again, as if the stuation was just too overwhelming, but we’d covered a few yards since we’d started casting and he was only hurrying back to where we’d left the net.
The fish was going with the flow, away from the sea and towards the distant lagoon. It was pointless standing still, trying to stop it, so, with Nick following, I began to run after it, the three of us in a frantic procession that seemed to go on for miles. Despite my assertion that this had to be a bass, there were, of course, other possibilities. Maybe it was a shark! I presumed it was something gigantic, but then a flounder would have felt huge in the tide race.
The fish eventually slowed, turned and surfaced, thirty yards out. We saw a flash of silver before it plunged away again and made another dash into mid-river. It was only a glimpse, but it was enough to confirm its identity and reveal its surprisingly modest size. Nick stood on the high embankment with the net, yet despite the rising river he could never have reached down to the surface. However, a few yards upstream there was an iron ladder fixed to an empty mooring point and he clambered down to water level and waited while I coaxed my fish towards him.
By now, one or two passers-by had stopped to watch the drama, and another angler, who’d been cycling along with a bundle of rods tied to his crossbar, came to offer advice.
‘Got a mullet there, have you?’ he asked.
‘No, it’s a bass.’
’It’s fighting more like a mullet.’
I didn’t like his derisory, local expert tone, but the fish rose again, much nearer than before, and I didn’t need to say more.
‘Blimey! It is a bass!’
It wallowed round towards Nick who eventually reached out and managed to scoop it into the mesh without falling in. To mumurs of appreciation from the assembly, he passed the net up to me and I laid the shining fish down and carefully unhooked it. I was slightly disappointed that it lacked the luminous blue of the original illustration; it seemed almost uniformly silver, although when I looked more closely there were subtle blushings of mauve, green and blue along the back and flecks of pale gold round the head. It was just over twenty inches long and weighed around three pounds – not the giant it had pretended to be, but still, as far as I was concerned, a great fish.
Had it not been my first bass I would have taken it back to the farmhouse where we were staying, but having given me so much already the least I could do was to give it back its freedom. After climbing down the ladder with the fish still in the net, I slipped it out of the mesh and watched it swirl away again into the tide race.
Chris Yates
At last, a piece from my book for CBTR! Hope you approve.(Book - Out of the Blue - to be published early September.)
There was a great sound and music piece on Radio 3 last night by Chris Woods. Listening to the river was a 20 minute description of life on the River Medway. It had some lovely moments. Go to Late Junction's web site; Wed 23rd April. The river piece is about 45 minutes into the 110 minute programme. I've started writing in the Weekend Telegraph again, now I've finished my book. The 1st article should be going in a week on Saturday - I think (in the weekend section). Its about monster brownies on the Lodden. I'd rather write for the weekend Guardian, but they said they weren't sure they had space for fishing related articles - and the Telegraph pay much better!
Hope you're well and enjoying the spring. First swallows arrived a day late here (20th). No cuckoo or nightingale yet. But a red kite and a peregrine flew right over the garden on the day I finished my book. And my old Toyota turned 200000 miles. Good omens, I presume.
All good fishes,
Chris.
TENTH CAST
THE SEA PERCH
A tidal river introduced me to the bass, and though it was a long time ago, and I was only sixteen, the encounter created a little turn in my path that would inevitably lead me to where I am today. Of all the dozens of Piscean species that have fascinated me over the years, only four had actually taken up residence in my dreams; but now, after half a lifetime, the bass has finally joined them.
As I mentioned before, the Latin name for the European sea bass is Decentrachus labrax, which is almost as impressive as the name of the family of fishes to which it belongs: the Serranidae. The Serranidae sound like like a group of beings, half fish, half elf, who probably inhabit the forests of sea kelp around our more remote shorelines. But with each tide they send in their armies of bass to invade the estuaries, advancing upriver, spying out the land, because, one day, they know it will all be sea again.
Isaak Walton, writing in the 17th Century, referred to bass as the sea perch, and this old English name also appeared in my childhood bible, The Observer’s Book of Freshwater Fish. I used to keep this book in the pocket of my school blazer so I could maintain a connection with my preferred reality, using the sacred images in the colour plates to keep me from despair during lessons. Especially maths lessons. The illustration of ‘the Bass or Sea Perch’ – all spectral blue and silver – shared a double page spread with the freshwater perch – all earthy greens and russets. I was familiar with the latter because of the shoals of small ones in the village pond, but, in my beginning, I knew nothing about the former and wondered what it was doing in a book about freshwater species until I read that it could exist as happily in an estuary as in the sea, and, as a juvenile, would ascend miles upstream to feed. So, when I first cast into what I definitely knew to be a tidal river, I fished for bass.
The river was the Blythe in Suffolk, near the harbour, just half a mile from the sea, where Nick and I insisted we be abandoned for the day while our parents explored the nearby town of Southwold. Upstream of us was a broad reedy lagoon which gradually narrowed into the deep straight channel that ran down past us and beyond the timber pilings and black clapboard harbour buildings towards the Wash. The water in front of us was dark and turbulent, with the tide running strongly and the river rapidly reversing. It seemed we had arrived at a propitious moment for surely, as the bible said; great shoals of bass would be riding in on the tidal current.
I told Nick we were bound to catch something, but he stared into the greyish depths and said he didn’t rate our chances. For a start we didn’t have any proper bass bait – no prawns, sand eels or mackerel strip, only bread, which was probably not a favourite item of diet. However, the bible said that ‘… bass are occasionally caught using a shining bait;’ and we had shining baits. In our tackle bags we had a small collection of metal lures which we’d acquired over the years, not for any specific purpose, but because we liked the look of them. Now Nick tied on something in silver and blue while I chose a gold Kilko spoon with red diagonals; and as the Blythe continued to rise we began to fish.
For a while we worked our lures through the quieter water close in, thinking it too wild in midstream, but after a few minutes I made a long cast across river and, after waiting a moment for the spinner to sink, began a slow retieve. I could feel the faint buzzing sensation along the line as the lure came back through the current – and then something pounced making the rod tip shake. For a second I couldn’t believe it was a fish. Perhaps I’d simply hooked a piece of jetsamming driftwood. But then the rod swooped violently over and the reel began to sing a song that I’d never heard before. Until that moment, no fish had ever taken more than a yard or two of line from me, mainly because I used strong tackle and screwed my reel down tight. But because I was fishing an open river with no visible snags, I was using much lighter gear than normal and had wisely slackened the clutch before I cast.
Hearing the continuous screeching, Nick came running over, looked up at the rod and said: ‘Is it really a fish?’
‘Of course it is!’
Then he ran away again, as if the stuation was just too overwhelming, but we’d covered a few yards since we’d started casting and he was only hurrying back to where we’d left the net.
The fish was going with the flow, away from the sea and towards the distant lagoon. It was pointless standing still, trying to stop it, so, with Nick following, I began to run after it, the three of us in a frantic procession that seemed to go on for miles. Despite my assertion that this had to be a bass, there were, of course, other possibilities. Maybe it was a shark! I presumed it was something gigantic, but then a flounder would have felt huge in the tide race.
The fish eventually slowed, turned and surfaced, thirty yards out. We saw a flash of silver before it plunged away again and made another dash into mid-river. It was only a glimpse, but it was enough to confirm its identity and reveal its surprisingly modest size. Nick stood on the high embankment with the net, yet despite the rising river he could never have reached down to the surface. However, a few yards upstream there was an iron ladder fixed to an empty mooring point and he clambered down to water level and waited while I coaxed my fish towards him.
By now, one or two passers-by had stopped to watch the drama, and another angler, who’d been cycling along with a bundle of rods tied to his crossbar, came to offer advice.
‘Got a mullet there, have you?’ he asked.
‘No, it’s a bass.’
’It’s fighting more like a mullet.’
I didn’t like his derisory, local expert tone, but the fish rose again, much nearer than before, and I didn’t need to say more.
‘Blimey! It is a bass!’
It wallowed round towards Nick who eventually reached out and managed to scoop it into the mesh without falling in. To mumurs of appreciation from the assembly, he passed the net up to me and I laid the shining fish down and carefully unhooked it. I was slightly disappointed that it lacked the luminous blue of the original illustration; it seemed almost uniformly silver, although when I looked more closely there were subtle blushings of mauve, green and blue along the back and flecks of pale gold round the head. It was just over twenty inches long and weighed around three pounds – not the giant it had pretended to be, but still, as far as I was concerned, a great fish.
Had it not been my first bass I would have taken it back to the farmhouse where we were staying, but having given me so much already the least I could do was to give it back its freedom. After climbing down the ladder with the fish still in the net, I slipped it out of the mesh and watched it swirl away again into the tide race.
Chris Yates
Monday, 28 April 2008
Real England & Three Men In A Float
One week and two very different books about the current state of England. Both books, although tonally poles apart, look out over the nation’s landscape and it’s national character to draw conclusions about the state of the country in 2008. The end result, with both Guardian/Ecologist writer Paul Kingsnorth’s ‘Real England’ and ‘Three Men In A Float’ by The Idler magazine’s Dan Kieran & Ian Vince, is a snapshot of 21st century Britain, of it’s people and it’s problems, with just a few ideas for how we can club together to alleviate them thrown in.
‘Real England’ seems at times almost ridiculously bleak in it’s overview. The UK’s small businesses, from pubs to farms to shops, are being steamrollered by multinationals. Our government is in collusion with big business, redrawing the maps of city centres and waterways the length of the country, allowing public access to be compromised in favour of new retail developments or apartment blocks. The book points out how we’ve all ignored the problem for too long, ending up in a perilous state where each city centre can be judged on a scale as to whether it’s a ‘clone town’, a ‘home town’ or a ‘border town’. Walking down most British high streets these days, it doesn’t take a maths genius to do the sums there. Local diversity is out, homogeny is in. Although these points alone aren’t exactly news, Kingsnorth’s exploration of the same changes outside of the cities - in the fields, in rural communities and on the village greens – is what makes the book so riveting. Personally, I’d have thought seeing a few organic British apples in Tescos was tantamount to a victory for the farmer and the consumer – here, it’s blindingly obvious that it’s just another marketing tool for supermarkets and that mass production and uniformity is still the order of the day. ‘Real England’ is the furious, non-conformist sibling of the (also essential) ‘England In Particular’ – whereas the latter celebrates the great things we’ve got left to embrace, Kingsnorth spells out exactly how long we’ll have them for unless something fundamental changes in the way we view our country, how the rapidly changing landscape is a danger much the same as climate change – that England in 50 years time might well be unrecognizable, and maybe not just because of the Mediterranean weather we’re being told to expect. Solutions, as ever, come down to personal choice – we have to want change in order for it to happen – if we want to stop the erosion of our national identity, then it’s still out there, you just have to grasp it before it’s just another piece of history, an irrelevance. A brilliant book.
"Real England: The Battle Against the Bland is a watershed study, a crucially important book; the most significant account of today's England I have read," Nick Groom, The Independent
The premise of ‘Three Men In A Float’ is fantastically simple – three men buy a milk float and attempt to drive ‘end to end’ across England (Lowestoft to Land’s End). Along they way, they must rely on the kindness of strangers in order to get a charge for the float, which runs at 15 mph and manages around 30 miles per 8 hour charge. The idea is to discover the country and the character of the people along the way, to see if there really is such a thing as England out there. The trip, which you could probably do in a day if you put your foot down and munched a load of speed, ends up taking them three weeks. Along the way, you start to see the British people as warm and helpful – their task goes from seemingly impossible to deceptively easy – people genuinely seem to want to help. The concept of slow travel is taken to it’s logical extreme – at one point the float is overtaken by a bee. Whatever they may have lost in speed they gain the enviable position of being able to watch hares or red kites from the luxury of a slow moving, virtually silent milk float, a milkman’s eye view of the countryside as it were.
It’s in watching as the English countryside unfurling itself in slow motion in “Three Men…” that the writers draw much the same conclusions at ‘Real England’ – that the people still care about the uniqueness of the country and that this is a place that we need to work at preserving, one with as delicate an eco-system as any coral reef or polar ice cap, one that we are in danger of altering beyond the point of return.
Me, I’m just waiting for someone to do the same kind of thing with Wales…
Robin Turner
‘Real England’ seems at times almost ridiculously bleak in it’s overview. The UK’s small businesses, from pubs to farms to shops, are being steamrollered by multinationals. Our government is in collusion with big business, redrawing the maps of city centres and waterways the length of the country, allowing public access to be compromised in favour of new retail developments or apartment blocks. The book points out how we’ve all ignored the problem for too long, ending up in a perilous state where each city centre can be judged on a scale as to whether it’s a ‘clone town’, a ‘home town’ or a ‘border town’. Walking down most British high streets these days, it doesn’t take a maths genius to do the sums there. Local diversity is out, homogeny is in. Although these points alone aren’t exactly news, Kingsnorth’s exploration of the same changes outside of the cities - in the fields, in rural communities and on the village greens – is what makes the book so riveting. Personally, I’d have thought seeing a few organic British apples in Tescos was tantamount to a victory for the farmer and the consumer – here, it’s blindingly obvious that it’s just another marketing tool for supermarkets and that mass production and uniformity is still the order of the day. ‘Real England’ is the furious, non-conformist sibling of the (also essential) ‘England In Particular’ – whereas the latter celebrates the great things we’ve got left to embrace, Kingsnorth spells out exactly how long we’ll have them for unless something fundamental changes in the way we view our country, how the rapidly changing landscape is a danger much the same as climate change – that England in 50 years time might well be unrecognizable, and maybe not just because of the Mediterranean weather we’re being told to expect. Solutions, as ever, come down to personal choice – we have to want change in order for it to happen – if we want to stop the erosion of our national identity, then it’s still out there, you just have to grasp it before it’s just another piece of history, an irrelevance. A brilliant book.
"Real England: The Battle Against the Bland is a watershed study, a crucially important book; the most significant account of today's England I have read," Nick Groom, The Independent
The premise of ‘Three Men In A Float’ is fantastically simple – three men buy a milk float and attempt to drive ‘end to end’ across England (Lowestoft to Land’s End). Along they way, they must rely on the kindness of strangers in order to get a charge for the float, which runs at 15 mph and manages around 30 miles per 8 hour charge. The idea is to discover the country and the character of the people along the way, to see if there really is such a thing as England out there. The trip, which you could probably do in a day if you put your foot down and munched a load of speed, ends up taking them three weeks. Along the way, you start to see the British people as warm and helpful – their task goes from seemingly impossible to deceptively easy – people genuinely seem to want to help. The concept of slow travel is taken to it’s logical extreme – at one point the float is overtaken by a bee. Whatever they may have lost in speed they gain the enviable position of being able to watch hares or red kites from the luxury of a slow moving, virtually silent milk float, a milkman’s eye view of the countryside as it were.
It’s in watching as the English countryside unfurling itself in slow motion in “Three Men…” that the writers draw much the same conclusions at ‘Real England’ – that the people still care about the uniqueness of the country and that this is a place that we need to work at preserving, one with as delicate an eco-system as any coral reef or polar ice cap, one that we are in danger of altering beyond the point of return.
Me, I’m just waiting for someone to do the same kind of thing with Wales…
Robin Turner
Thursday, 24 April 2008
Fish Tales
The Perch
Chris Yates explores the finer traits of some of Britain's coarse fish.
Radio 4 says, "Writer Tom Fort accompanies Chris to the River Thames and argues that Perch are quintessentially masculine, in spite of what the Victorians wrote".
Listen Here
Chris Yates explores the finer traits of some of Britain's coarse fish.
Radio 4 says, "Writer Tom Fort accompanies Chris to the River Thames and argues that Perch are quintessentially masculine, in spite of what the Victorians wrote".
Listen Here
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