Wade - How to Think Like a Fish: And Other Lessons from a Lifetime in Angling

There are but

Five notes

And yet their permutations

Are more

Than can ever be heard.

Sun-tzu, The Art of War

Will you walk into my parlour? said the Spider to the Fly.

Mary Howitt, 1828

T heres something reassuring about low light and weight of water, and this place is one of the safest, deepest holes in the river. Down here, my eyes register the difference between night and day, but not much more. I move by touch, plotting my path on the map of memory. Not just the feel of rocks and sand and mud and weed but also the slip and scrub of the water. Far from being a uniform flow, it moves in different directions and at different speeds. This gives the river a distinct pattern, a graincomplex but logical, invisible but perfectly readablewhich subtly encodes the position of the obstacles that shape it. This is why, even when Im not touching anything solid, I always know where I am.

I nose into the place I was looking for. Close to my left side is a vertical rock wall, rising almost to the surface. If I were to reach out sideways with the tentacle on my upper jaw, I could touch it. Ahead of me is more rock, rising in steep steps, down which the water tumbles. Im in the angle formed by these two rocks, my belly lightly bumping on the riverbed. Behind me the water shallows somewhat and spreads out into a pool, before funneling into a rock-strewn run. Back there, marking time in the friction-slowed water near the riverbed, and lurking on the edges of the flow, are other hungry fish, which would rather be in the place where I am now, if it were not already occupied.

Whats special about this spot is that anything carried by the current will settle directly in front of me, in the deep residual turbulence of the waterfall, where I can investigate it with minimal effort. And it appears that something is already here. The familiar smellscape is colored by tendrils of something else. I edge to my right and the scent gets stronger. My tentacle finds its source, and easing closer I confirm that its a dead fish, its scales reflecting the almost non-existent light. Its fresh and succulent, but something about it troubles me.

Earlier today I saw one of the large shapes slide across the surface. I heard its high-pitched whine before I saw the silhouette. Ive seen these before and I know they are dangerous. A couple of times, shortly after one passed, Ive seen a red-tail fish twisting unnaturally and rising in the water, sending out its chemical alarm. So I back away and leave this meal, which looks too much like a gift. But I stay close enough to deter any competitor from darting in.

When I check on it later, the dead fish is still there. This is reassuring. I move up close and open my mouth, creating just enough suction to lightly pick it up. It moves freely, not appearing to be tethered. I back off a short distance and then drop it, and as I do so it appears to get caught in a tongue of current, fluttering up then obliquely down, before sliding to a rest right at the base of the rock face.

It doesnt move anymore, and I have the taste of it now, urging me to throw off any remaining caution. I wait and watch, inching closer, then open my mouth fully to suck it right in. As I do so, I double my body to the right, to turn my head downstream.

Sixty feet above, on a slanting rock beside the river, an electronic buzzer sounds and a dim green light shows thick nylon line rolling off an improbably large reel. Hands reach down and pick up the rod, then push the drag lever forward. With the spool now locked, the growing tension in the line starts to transmit in both directions. What happens now could determine how this ends. Not enough of a pause and the strike may not set the hook; too much and the bait may be ejected. So theres an instant of intense weighing and calculation, before the rod pulls up and backand is wrenched down in response.

Its the moment this creature, which until then had existed only in my imagination, becomes real

O ne day in 1999 a man pulled a gun on me in Brazil, but the only time Ive been shot was in England. I was sitting on the ground at the edge of a small pond, legs pulled up in front of me, with my arms wrapped around my knees, when something ripped through the foliage some yards to my right. It took a few moments to work out what it was. The farmer was on the far bank, and hed taken a shot at a coot in front of me. He couldnt see me because I was underneath a willow tree, obscured by its trailing branches.

All this had barely registered when a second shot ricocheted off the water, this time just a couple of feet away, having narrowly missed the bird, which was now squawking in alarm. The next shot hit me in the right armpit.

Recalling this now I have trouble believing the reaction of my much younger self. As a teenager I was pretty useless in a number of respects, but there was nothing wrong with my reflexes and I had a well-developed sense of moral outrage. But I just continued to sit there. Having verified that there was no broken skin under my thick camo jacket, I concluded that it was probably just an air riflewhich he didnt fire again.