and what
do we want from our fishing?
By
Ron Holloway APGAI
To succeed as a river keeper or fishery manager it is vital from the very beginning to understand the way fisher people think and the attitudes they have towards their chosen sport. Secondly there is a need to fully appreciate what the fisherman wants from his or her fishing. With this knowledge the keeper then has to be prepared to supply those requirements to best of his ability in pleasant surroundings at an attractive and economical price.
These sound very simple problems to set before the keeper or fishery manager, yet it is not quite so simple as it seems because if asked it will be found that it is very difficult, if ever, to get a clear and concise answers from fisher folk as they have so many and very varied answers to the questions: - “Why do you fish?” and “What do you want from your fishing?
Having
spent most of my lifetime in the company of game
fishing people I have endeavoured to answer these
questions for myself based on my close studies
of these fishers over some 60 years in the fishing
world, of which over 30 years have been spent
as a river keeper on the river Itchen.
My observations of angling in general and game anglers in particular indicate to me that in the evolution of modern man the hunter gatherer instincts are still latent in most of us. This is because each generation in turn produces offspring cast in the mould of its progenitors and there exists therein a strong desire at times to follow in their footsteps despite what the “anti” brigade would like to have us think.
Each generation in turn hears the call that has reverberated through the aeons of time as the angler within us answers this deeply ingrained and powerful pull. The heart races as the blood is stirred when the news filters through that the salmon are in or there is a large fly hatch and the trout are rising well. These overpowering feelings may mellow and change as age creeps up upon us but they rarely disappear completely.
So let us briefly take a closer look at today’s discriminating descendant of early man who now waves a featherweight carbon wand as he stalks up the banks of his favourite trout stream. We soon find that herewith there is a very strange paradox, which in fact must be the strangest for any known sport and something that must be positively confounding to the non-angler.
This
fly fisher now sets forth to catch trout, but
he does not want to catch them too easily on the
other hand he does not want them to be impossible
to catch. He likes to catch large trout, but he
does not want them to be the same size. He does
not like the experience of fish getting away,
but he does not want to be too successful in landing
every fish he rises. Just because he is hunting
trout does not mean he must kill every fish he
catches as this is reducing the trout to a state
of possession which inevitably leads to the modern
affliction of “limititus”.
There must be a certain
degree of failure and a considerable amount of
uncertainty. The degree of personal satisfaction
is realised in the wonderful challenge of the
natural problems faced and in the immense satisfaction
gained in solving these problems. That is angling,
that is fly-fishing. The measure of a good fishery
and a good keeper or fishery manager is whether
these requirements can be provided for our most
discriminating angler!