Carping on

Looking at the magazine racks of WH Smith today I was struck, not for the first time, at the number of carp magazines. There was Carp World, Carp Talk,Total Carp, Advanced Carp Fishing, Carpology, Crafty Carper, Big Carp Magazine and UK Angling Times Carp.

The front covers of seven of these eight magazines featured a man holding up a big carp. The eighth magazine had two men, each holding up a big carp. I can imagine the monthly editorial picture desk meetings of these magazines:

Editor: "What do we have for the front cover this month?"

Picture editor: "You're going to like this one. It's a bloke holding a carp."

Editor: "Hmm... Anything else?"

Picture editor producing another picture of a man with a carp: "What about this one?"

Editor: "I can't help thinking it's rather similar."

Picture editor: "Totally different."

Editor: "How?"

Picture editor: "He's not wearing a hat."

Those carp editors need to be looking at the rest of the angling press for ideas. Pike and Predator, for example, featured a man holding a perch. The tench special of Course Fisherman had a man holding - yes you guessed it - a tench, while Boat Fish used a picture of a man holding a big turbot.

You have to feel sorry for Fly Fishing and Fly Tying magazine. I picked up a random cover from the pile besides my desk and there was the familiar format, a man dressed in fishing gear holding.....well I can't actually see, but I think it must be a fly.

Heavy metal, light response

One of the happier by-products of industrial decline in the UK has been the recovery of many of our most polluted rivers. The Tyne in Northumberland, the upper reaches of the Calder in Yorkshire, the river Don at Penistone and many more have benefited from the restoration of natural fish stocks.

The problem is that some of the historic threats still remain. Industrial properties - or their remains - continue to line the river banks in many places and pollution incidents still occur. An escape of cleaning fluid wrecked a stretch of the River Wandle last year. In that case the company involved, Thames Water, is heavily committed to restoration work.

But in another serious incident, this time on the River Derwent in Derbyshire, the subsequent interventions appear to have been woefully inadequate and inexcusably slow in happening.

The River Derwent, some 50 miles long,is the largest river in the Peak District, joining the River Trent just south of Derby.

In January 2007, a settlement lagoon owned by Glebe Mines burst, discharging large volumes of sediment into the Derwent via one of its tributaries, the Stoke Brook. The sediment was contaminated with mine tailings - fine waste material - which included arsenic, cadmium, lead and other metals.

Now dredging work has started on the riverbed in an attempt to get rid of the poisonous sediment after a scientific report, commissioned by the Anglers’ Conservation Association (ACA), found that heavy metals had begun to accumulate in the food chain in parts of the river.

The report found elevated lead levels in insects from the effected area leading to a risk that lead levels in fish could rise as a result. Over time, warns the ACA, the range of elevated metals could pose a threat to the ecosystem and to people who might eat contaminated fish. Concentrations of heavy metals are known to suppress the immune system in animals and humans.

The ACA says the Environment Agency responded inadequately with limited sampling after it had recognised the need to act swiftly.

The lagoon burst in January 2007 and EA fisheries officers were measuring sediment depths in early February. By March EA scientists were aware of "acute damage" to a significant stretch of the stream and recommended the removal of sediments. In June 2007 the EA said that removing the silt was likely to start within two weeks. That was over a year ago. In the interim further pollution has occurred. Only now has the work started.

The ACA has chartered what I can only describe as a classic story of bureaucratic delay when it was clear from the start what needed to be done: get the clean up underway and deal with the "who pays?" argument later. The Environment Agency should hang its head in shame. Anglers deserve better.

From Russia with just a touch of smugness

Here's a report I just received from Roxtons, providers of fishing and shooting holidays (at a price).

CHARLIE WHITE REPORTS FROM LOWER VARZUGA:

"We are now into the second week of the season and summer has started to arrive. Bright sunshine and warm temperatures are melting the remaining snow and ice and the water levels are rising. The water is currently 5 degrees C and warming all the time but sinking lines are the best choice at present - we may well be into sink tips and intermediates by next week.

Last week the ten rods at Lower Varzuga landed 279 fish with an excellent average size. The rods also caught a number of sea trout - something we sometimes experience in the early weeks. The first three days of this week Michael Evans and party have taken 142 fish, with Chris Davis taking his first salmon on a fly. Alex Fenton and John Millar have each had two fish of 16lbs and a number of fish above 12lbs.

Kitza opened this week with a very encouraging start. The ten rods who are all, bar one, new to the river had 108 mint fresh fish for their three days with four of the rods landing their first ever salmon. The fish have been mostly caught below camp but as the river warms up it will not be long before the fish are spread all over the beat.

Middle Varzuga's first week saw the ten rods landing 211 fish with many new rods to the beat. This week the eleven rods, the majority of who know the river exceptionally well, have so far taken 277 fish. With the number of fish running the river here at Lower, I expect Middle's numbers to be somewhat different by the end of the week!

The river is looking superb at the moment, my only caveat being that we might get a day or two of high dirty water later this week as the warm weather melts the last of the snow."


Well bully for you Charlie. I'm sure we'd all catch salmon if the rivers were teeming with them. Let's be clear about this: this is fishing for the well heeled. It is also fishing for those obsessed with catching fish.

Would I go? With averages of 36 fish per rod per week in the Kola peninsula, you bet your bottom dollar I would. But I'm not sure I would pay the £5,000 minimum I would need to fork out to get there and fish. I'm told the cooking and residential facilities are excellent these days - better than the old days when everything was a bit rough and ready. But it's still Russia and the scenery is desolate.

But you go for the fishing don't you? Well not entirely. I want more than that. I want scenery, I want to stand around a bit and check out my surroundings. I want to chew the fat with my chums and sometimes - horror of horrors - I want to sit down and do nothing. Yes that's called "not fishing."

But when you're bringing back your tally to share with your party you're in a numbers game my friends. There's pressure to fish - all of the time. It becomes obsessive, manic and just a little bit unhealthy.

Am I embittered that I have spent most of my lifetime flogging away for salmon in Scottish rivers for extremely thin returns while novice anglers are filling their boots on the Kola? Not in the slightest (cough!). Blank days maketh the angler, someone once said (yes you guessed, that's a little bit of my home-spun twaddle but I'll hold to it, nevertheless).

So is my envy at these catches as green as the sour grapes? Too right it is. I would love a trip to the Kola rivers, if only to know what it is to see Atlantic spring salmon running in such prodigious numbers. Would I swap that for my summer week on the River Dee? Never. You can buy great fishing with a flourish of your cheque book, but some things in life are priceless.

OK then, would I swap my office-based existence, writing about work all day, for Charlie White's job as Roxton's director of fishing? Hmmm, let me think. Roxtons, you have my number.

Blobs and bling - fishing or rapping?

The bright yellow sparkly blob, commonly used in reservoir fly fishing has become a controversial lure of choice according to this report in the Sunday Telegraph.

Well what did we expect? Rainbow trout, in particular, will go for bright yellow attractors pulled swiftly through the water. Indeed I was advised to try something bright yellow when fishing in the recent One Fly competition on the River Test where the beat had been stocked with rainbows.

Blobs on a prime chalk stream? Sorry if you've spilled your tea all over your trousers but that's what a competition mentality does to people. I wonder what Halford would have made of the blob?

Egg patterns

Matching the hatch? Not quite, but it could be argued that blobs look a little bit like eggs, albeit fast moving eggs if they are retrieved at speed.

Are we not doing something similar when using bright yellow and orange lures fished fast to attract salmon? In this case trying to imitate the local insect life isn't going to do much good because the salmon isn't feeding anyway.

But the trout is looking for food and what we like most, I think, if you will pardon this generalisation, is to aim our fly at a surface feeding trout and see it taking our little fly in the belief that it is eating something just like the flies it has been feeding on for the past hour or two. That, fundamentally, is the difference in fly fishing aesthetics.

In a less obvious way it divided the chalk stream fishers when G E M Skues began to use nymphs. Unlike a fast retrieved blob there is some real skill in imparting life in to a nymph fished at the correct depth and discerning the take when it comes. But here again we can "cheat" by using indicators that can double-up as floats.

And if we are float fishing our flies, what is the difference between that and dangling a bunch of maggots (other than that the maggots move of their own accord)?

Better than thou

I don't much care for reservoir fishing, I don't much care for "world champion" tags or fishing qualifications that say "I am better than thou."

Fishing, for me, is something personal. I don't want to feel pressured to fish all the time. I like to stand and stare. The other day I was enjoying watching Mayflies on the water. Some were coming down to the water and landing on spent flies attracted by some unknown smell perhaps, or was it the shape?

Fish weren't rising for them although they may well have been feeding on the nymphs. But that day I was looking for rising fish. I didn't want to fish nymphs.

But it seems a crazy old world when anglers spend their lives thinking of ways to attract fish then, when they succeed beyond their wildest imaginings, find their new method is outlawed because it is too easy.

Behind this newspaper report, however, there is something not very pleasant. There is an implication in the talk of "yobs with blobs" that fly fishing is attracting members of the West Staines Massiv who shouldn't be doing it.

Rainbow rap

Sooner or later, perhaps, we will be singing along to "rainbow rap" and choosing our "flies" from glitzy bling boxes. We could park our spare flies in our ear-piercings. Now that's an idea.

Well if it keeps young people from stabbing and shooting each other I'm all for it. In time they will tire of the easy fishing and begin listening to the old farts (sorry I meant to say "experienced fishermen") who would never - not in a million years - be tempted to use a blob themselves. Goodness me, what are those yellow things in my fly box? Hide them, quickly. As Ali G would say, "Let's keep it real."
Respek.