A few weeks ago I visited
the annual Country Land and Business Association Game Fair
at Belvoir Castle in Leicestershire, an event that reminds
anyone who needs reminding, just what business there is
in field sports. Such visits can turn out expensive as you
pick up bits of equipment you never knew you needed.
Between the shopping you can drool at
the stands promoting all the exotic places to go and fish
these days. Foreign trips aside, however, the reality for
most of us is that much of our fishing will be closer to
our own back yards.
My nearest chalk stream is about a good
hour away; otherwise there is the canal and a few small
rivers. But, for some reason, although it is no more than
20 minutes down the road, I have rarely given much thought
to the River Thames. At least this was the case until I
had a call from Mark Anderson.
At the Game Fair I had enquired at the
Orvis stand about one of their accredited guides who I knew
fished for pike on the fly. This turned out to be Mark who,
between planning various trips for clients that weekend,
asked me over for a “chat and a cast”.
A duck was cooking in the oven but I thought
it could wait. So I motored over to his home which I could
describe either as a small house or as a large fishing hut
with a veranda, backing on to the River Thames. Mark was
wearing shorts and a vest. Propped against the veranda was
an array of rods sporting some of the biggest, woolliest
and most garish coloured flies I had ever seen.
You know how sometimes you meet a long
lost friend and they want to catch up by showing you photographs
and mementoes of all the things they have done in the last
10 years; well that’s what its like to meet Mark for
the first time. He showed me his sailfish bills, his marlin’s
eye socket, a pike’s head and his box of shucks –
the frail remains of mayfly larva.
The enthusiasm of this Zimbabwean-born
fishing guide who has made London his home, is catching.
“Look how clear that water is,” he said, bending
over the river. “Look at the hatches coming off the
water. Look at those rises. This river is teeming with life.
It’s a phenomenal place to fish and it’s inside
the M25,” he said.
The evening was wearing on when we took
off in his boat to look at the weir pool below Penton Hook
lock at Chertsey , about 15 miles up river from the end
of the tidal stretch of the Thames. This is where he likes
to fish for pike on the fly. Casting deep in to the bushy
banks from an anchored boat is not easy but the flies were
doing nicely. Mark had an offer but time was moving on and
we had to leave empty-handed.
A fish would have been a bonus. But on
a warm summer evening it was enough simply to talk about
the river. Mark Anderson, is one of a growing number of
anglers who have become passionately interested in habitat
and the sustainability of wild fishing stocks.
Too often anglers can become focused on
their favourite species, seeing every other fish, bird or
mammal as unwelcome predators. Some associations will build
hatcheries or buy in supplies that are bred from a different
gene pool, while doing little to maintain the balance of
nature in and around the river. I want to catch wild fish,
not farmed fish.
In too many cases interventions described
as conservation are ill-considered interference. This means
that grayling are sometimes electro-fished from chalk streams
to make way for trout. In those same streams the appearance
of a large pike can send fishermen in to a spin for fear
that it will eat its way through their trout stocks when
in fact it might do much to control the grayling numbers.
“What anglers sometimes forget is
that the pike performs an important duty maintaining the
health of a fishery by eating all the weak and sick fish,”
says Mark. “A big pike is also a check on its own
numbers because it will prey on all the smaller pike that
will otherwise come to populate the river.
“In an African game park no-one
culls the lions because they eat gazelles and zebra. Their
role in the eco-system is clearly understood. The pike performs
a similar role in the river.”
By the time I got home the duck had gone.
Duckless and fishless I decided the only way to end on a
high note this month was to get down to the canal with my
pike fly. So I did, the very next day, when the heavens
opened and I caught nothing but a cold. I should have gone
to the Thames.
Mark Anderson guides anglers in many different kinds
of fishing. He can be contacted on 01932 570140 or 07932
567410 or email: pikeonfly@hotmail.com
