Fishing ... Aye, Mun, Tis A Sport For The Canny

Sydney Morning Herald

Saturday November 10, 1990

PETER FITZSIMONS

STRATFORD-ON-AVON, Friday: It is one of those curious grey days in old England where, curiouser and curiouser, the heavens periodically open to release both rain and light. One end of the wandering rainbow looks to lead to Shakespeare's birthplace, the other is fixed upon the spot where the Bard is reputed to have gasped his last mortal breath.

On Stratford Common, a visiting Australian Rugby team is going through the first shivering moves of their training session as an adjacent pack of dogs gaze quizzically at the morning sky.

But tempest, what tempest?

Oblivious to us all on the banks of the Avon River, a man is loading his catapult with squirming maggots and launching them with a twang into the flow

(Polite cough.) What would this be then?

"Fishin, mun." Twang.

Sure enough, tis . The maggot missiles are aimed with such a direction and projectory that after hitting the Avon it is their grizzly fate to drift down to the depths where one of their brother maggots is on a hook. Feeding frenzy time for all the little fishies ... and a hook for dessert for the unlucky.

To those not imbued with the fishing ethos it is an odd business, made all the odder by the fact that this fisherman never eats the fish.

Paul the fisherman proves to be a Stratford taxi driver on his day off from the tourist hordes, and even if he does say so himself, he is damn nigh one of the best fishermen in these parts.

"The fish around here aren't much good to eat," he says. "But no matter, fishing is me sport."

And the attraction of such a sport would be ... ?

"To be able to outwit the fish and prove yerself smarter," he says with no trace of humour.

The way Paul explains river fishing, it is indeed complex.

"The real skill is to make the fish think the maggot on the hook is totally free in the water and flowing with it like all the other maggots and heeby jeebies. To do that you've gotta take into account the currents and the wind and then set your line and float so that the maggot on the bottom will float at the same speed as the current on the bottom which is slower than the current on the top."

There in a nutshell, as Paul explains it, is the crucial skill of river fishing-to use your wiles to compensate for the difference in current at various depths.

A novice fisherman will let the speed of the hook at the bottom be determined by the speed of the float at the top, (Uh, am I boring you?) while the skilled one will drag his line slightly or use the force of the wind on the float to retard the hook's speed.

But soft, what tug on yonder line through water breaks? This is a fish ... the first he has caught since I broke his fierce concentration.

Actually, "this fish" looks to me only like an overgrown tadpole. Definitely not big enough to force the door on a fish disco if even a mid-sized sardine bouncer was on duty-but Paul is inordinately proud regardless.

This little fishie is apparently one of the "Chub species", which, he is at pains to point out, is the smartest of all the fish in the Avon.

Apparently, once fish flesh becomes unimportant, brain size is all and Paul is happy that he has outsmarted an aquatic Einstein.

Had I not informed him that in Australia our fish are so stupid we can catch them with raw steaks on bent forks attached to dog chains he might have been even happier.