Rob Beattie - The Bluffers Guide to Fishing

Hammersley House

5-8 Warwick Street

London W1B 5LX

United Kingdom

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Published 2014

Copyright Bluffers 2014

Publisher: Thomas Drewry

Publishing Director: Brooke McDonald

Series Editor: David Allsop

Design and Illustration: Jim Shannon

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of Bluffers.

A CIP Catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Bluffers Guide, Bluffers and Bluff Your Way are registered trademarks.

You will be pitting your estimable wits against a fish of very little brain with just a rod and a line, something tantalising on a hook, and sometimes a landing net.

GONE FISHING

T heres a fishing scene in the 1936 screwball comedy classic Libeled Lady when leading man William Powell (whose character has clearly never held a fishing rod in his life) emerges from the last of many dunkings to discover that hes caught by purest fluke the biggest trout in the river. Standing there under the admiring gaze of Myrna Loy (the object of his affections and the reason hes soaked) and her fishing-obsessed father (once disapproving, now looking on with newfound respect), he watches as his just-purchased copy of Trout Fishing for Beginners floats down the river behind them both before rounding a bend and disappearing out of sight. His secret safe, Powell, beaming, responds to their praise with a modest: It was nothing.

This is Olympic-standard bluffing and, although you cant expect to start at this sort of level, over the course of The Bluffers Guide to Fishing youll learn everything you need to know to hold your own among the enormous and diverse angling community whether its in a cosy snug over a pint of old Chubthumper, on board the Saucy Sue for a days mackerel fishing with a can of supermarket lager, tipping down a peppered vodka on Russias Kola Peninsula or enjoying a bracing glass of 12-year-old McBeattie with a dash of water as the mist rises over the Spey.

With any luck, youll never need to get your feet wet, but if you do, help is at hand.

The Bluffers Guide to Fishing will go a-angling (theres a reference to Izaak Walton, the godfather of fishing writing) so that you dont have to. It will help you to tell your pinkies from your gozzers, your boilies from your pop-ups, PVA bags from bait droppers, bite alarms from buzzers, Hairy Marys from March Browns and ragworms from lugworms. It will take you inside the secretive world of the specimen hunter, open the Aladdins Cave of carp angling and the rapacious multimillion-pound industry that rides on its scaly coattails, eavesdrop on the sepia-tinted stuck-in-the-50s world of salmon anglers and their gillies, strike out in search of Mongolias mighty taimen (minus the inconvenient bear attacks) and introduce household names like John Wilson, Chris Yates and Big Girl the carp, all from the comfort of your armchair.

Throughout this book the words fishing and angling will be used interchangeably and, generally speaking, this is perfectly acceptable. It is done all the time, as you will shortly discover. However, once youve mastered some of the basics, you will probably find yourself discussing fishing with fellow anglers and angling with those who dont fish. Its a small and seemingly contradictory point but, as every bluffer knows, the devil is in the detail. You should also know that the terms angling and angler are very rarely used when talking about game fishing. Confused? Dont worry; all will become clear over the next few chapters.

And remember, commercial fishing is entirely different from the sort of recreational fishing described in these pages. Well, strictly, it isnt because theyre both about catching fish. But thats where the similarities end. You, as a bluffer, will be pitting your estimable wits against a fish of very little brain with just a rod and a line, something tantalising on a hook, and sometimes a landing net. If you think that it wont be much of a contest, youre in for a very big surprise.

Fishing is a maze. People have spent lifetimes trying to find their way through it, and even a way out of it. The bluffer hasnt got a lifetime to spare, so when you find yourself on the spot, this short but definitive guide offers invaluable help.

It sets out to conduct you through the main danger zones encountered in discussions about fishing and to equip you with the vocabulary and evasive technique that will minimise the risk of being rumbled as a bluffer. It will give you a few easy-to-learn hints and techniques that might even allow you to be accepted as a fishing expert of rare ability and experience. But it will do more. It will give you the tools to impress legions of marvelling listeners with your knowledge and insight without anyone discovering that, until you read this, you probably didnt know the difference between a fruit fly and a flash damsel.

The bluffer must have a ready answer to the question perpetually posed by non-anglers: Why on earth do you enjoy sitting outdoors in all weather, looking miserable and not catching anything?

WELL AND TRULY HOOKED

T he Irish literary critic Vivian Mercier once wrote of Samuel Becketts absurd masterpiece, Waiting for Godot, that it has achieved a theoretical impossibility a play in which nothing happens, that yet keeps audiences glued to their seats. Whats more, since the second act is a subtly different reprise of the first, he has written a play in which nothing happens, twice. This astute observation can equally be applied to fishing with knobs on since it is often a sport in which nothing happens, all the time.

Given anglings reputation for tedium, the bluffer must have a ready answer to the question perpetually posed by non-anglers, which may be paraphrased thus: Why on earth do you enjoy sitting outdoors in all weather, looking miserable and not catching anything?

While the following answers might be suggested as jumping-off points, you should feel free to improvise as necessary. Since all anglers are characterised as congenital liars, bluffers have a unique advantage when describing their love of, and adventures in, fishing.

IT GETS ME OUT OF THE HOUSE

Since many people still hanker for life to be a version of a 1970s sitcom where the blundering or browbeaten husband is undermined and ridiculed at every turn by his shrewish yet domineering wife, this is a useful explanation that even now holds water. The stereotypes may have disappeared from the light-entertainment schedules, but theyre still alive and kicking in virtually every family-oriented advert where women are clever, kind and resourceful, and men are well-meaning boneheads. Other anglers will usually respond with a look of rueful recognition.