Cast of the Week 3 - Casting for Gold

Week 3

Cast of the Week

If there’s one thing certain in angling it is that nothing’s for ever. I recommend that you buy a book called ‘Broadland Pike – A History of the Largest Recorded Captures’ published by Steve Harper. (ISBN0 9532377 0 2) If you’re into pike, you’ll love it. Juicy photographs and some wonderful stories.

But here’s the key. Possibly sixty or seventy percent of the waters that Steve talks about could, very shortly, be no more. What am I talking about? Well, only the other day in the Eastern Daily Press, an outline plan drawn up by the Environment Agency and all its various departments was revealed. In the face of global warming and rising sea levels, in order to save money, a vast swathe of what is now Broadland is to be surrendered to the oncoming tide. This means that some of the most famous pike waters in history, like Hickling and Horsey, could in twenty years or so simply be brackish lagoons totally swamped by high tides and northerly winds. Pike will be a memory. You’ll be more likely to find mullet and flatfish resident.

As it happens, naturalists aren’t too worried. The prospect of this vast sea marsh even attracts them. It should become home to endless numbers of waterfowl, in the winter particularly. The only people who are concerned are, primarily, homeowners who stand to lose a very great deal and pikers who will lose waters famous for over a century.

Or am I worrying overmuch? After all, the biggest pike I’ve ever actually seen came from the Baltic Sea just off Sweden. There, over centuries no doubt, the pike have learned to live with the salt. Of course, we’re talking brackish more than out and out saline but, even so, perhaps it’s possible that our Broadland pike might learn to adapt. Probably not, but as anglers for wild fish, we learn to grasp at straws.

If there is a moral to this tale it is that you cannot take anything for granted in this fishing life of ours. If you are onto a good thing, then it pays to both exploit it and look after it. Let’s take this present perch revival. A lot of us, old enough to remember the Seventies and Eighties, will recall the horrors of the Perch Disease then. In the Sixties, the perch was one of our most popular and common fish. By the Eighties, a population of big perch was like gold dust. However, now, as we approach the end of the Noughties, there seem to be big perch everywhere once more. What I’d say to you is don’t take these for granted. Populations of perch can come and go as easily as will-o’-the-wisps. One day you can’t stop catching three pounders. The next day the water is like a grave.

It’s rather like river two pound roach – and notice I’m talking about river fish, not stillwater fish. Back in the Sixties and Seventies, many lowland English rivers produced fish of this stamp. Even then, though, I think some of us knew we were living and catching on borrowed time. That’s why I fished religiously six nights a week for some ten years or more. I knew that there would come a day when big river roach were no longer to be had. I can’t look back at that mid Seventies to mid Eighties period now with regret. I exploited it just as thoroughly as anyone could have done. And today, I guess a true river two pound roach is probably about as big a prize as there is in the bait fishing world.

Of course, I’m talking wild fish. This morning I’m off to a commercial fishery to do a photo shoot. If otters or cormorants or pollution should strike here then, I guess, the owner will simply buy more fish. How come JB has sunk so low I can hear you ask? Well, you know what, I’m actually looking forward to it. In the end, a fish is a fish and I love them all.