Why it is all right to go fishing and not kill any fish.

I’ve been going fishing since I was eight years old. My first outing brought 17 of the Queen’s Gudgeon to the bank, much to the surprise of my friend’s dad, the unlikely inspiration for my new found passion. Ever since that day I have been fishing with an angle, at times vehemently, at others with a fair-weather drive. A constant throughout this time has been an innate but misunderstood need to justify my actions to my contestors.

I have been subjected to a running commentary on my action throughout, from my liberal thinking, animal loving, badge wearing, chattering peers. From the skinny, be-sandaled Mary of the Fourth Form, through the righteous Sixth Form Goths to the Ironic slogan wearers of post-modern East London today (or the cap sleeved New Zealand macho-men of West London today), I have been harassed with one simple question - ‘How can you justify fishing just for pleasure and not for food?’ .

Well, I couldn’t. It’s like someone saying ‘get your hair cut’ to a long hair - there just isn’t a witty reply. There should be after all this time, but there isn’t. I’ve tried a number of approaches, from ‘well surely catch and release is more ethical than killing fish when we can simply buy fish from a shop’ and ‘it satisfies my primal need to hunt without hurting anything’ to ‘it gets me out in the countryside and aids relaxation, making me a more calm and collected urbanite than most’. All retorts are hopelessly inadequate and I have been reduced, through translucent answers to further questioning, to falling upon ‘look, why don’t you just fuck off, what’s it got to do with you anyway?’.

I have to admit to becoming perplexed at my inability to justify my actions. I was a ten year old communist until someone came along with a more informed opinion at which point I simply aligned myself with them. I am unable to do this with fishing. Through logic I have rejected religion but cannot reject this seemingly futile sport in the same way. The following is therefore my attempt to justify my actions through rational, objective argument. To avoid labouring a point, as most readers won’t care less for my predicament and may find the subject matter tiresome, I have elected to use a bullet-point approach. I will outline other people’s reservations in bullet points and gun them down with a further set of my own. Here goes:

Why its not all right to fish for sport.

1. Catching fish with a hook hurts the fish. There are no two ways about it. The hook hurts the fish’s mouth. How would you like to be hooked through the lip and reeled in on the end of a line, touched with burning hot hands, kept in a net for hours and then thrown back injured and emotionally damaged in the name of sport.?

2. A large proportion of fish caught for sport die as a result of poor handling from the fisherman. These fish are not eaten or used in any constructive way, they are simply discarded like rubbish.

3. Fishing for sport Is a bully-boy bloodsport in the same league as fox hunting or badger baiting. Pleasure fishing is mindless thuggery.

4. Fishing harms the environment, fishermen leave litter, discarded line and lead weights which kill countless birds and mammals

5. Fishing is a boring waste of time. It is not a sport and is merely a pastime based on luck.

Arguments that can be supported by a number of historical quotes:

1. ‘float fishing I can only compare to a stick and a string, with a worm at one end and a fool at the other’ Dr Johnson

2. Fishing is ‘the cruellest, coldest and stupidest of pretended sports’ and ‘no angler can be a good man’ Byron

That’s their side. These are the statements which have plagued me, and here follows my vitriolic antidote. Point by point:

Why its all right to fish for sport.

1. I concede that it is hard to imagine a hook in the mouth not eliciting pain, even though a typical argument might suggest that the lip membrane contains no nerves (see Sir Humphrey Davy, Salmonia,1828). However, surely it is the nature of the pain stricken individual to look for relief from the pain, not pull away and increase the tension as the fish does., as Herbert Palmer explains ‘The instinct of a man with a pair of dental forceps jammed in his mouth is to clasp the dentist round the waist, and not push himself furiously backwards in his chair’. As for emotional damage, what real consciousness does a fish have? Have you not seen the Monty Python sketches? A memory on par with a mammal it does not have, as AH Chaytor states ‘a salmon will frequently take a fly several times, even after he has had a very sharp prick’. This report from H Cholmondeley-Pennell from 1866 further explains ..’in removing the hook from the jaws of the Perch, one eye was displaced and remained adhering to it. Knowing the reparative capabilities of piscine organisation, I returned the maimed fish, which was too small for my basket, to the lake and, being somewhat scant of minnows, threw the line in again with the eye attached as bait, there being no other of any description on the hook. The float disappeared almost instantly; and on landing the newcomer, it turned out to be the fish I had the moment before thrown in, and which had thus been actually caught by his own eye’. Oh yes, and I never touch them with dry hands and I don’t use keep nets so you can’t hang that other bunkum on me.

2. A large proportion? What proportion? In my experience, it’s very small. The infrequent accident notwithstanding, and of course not accounting for Fatty O’Conner’s punching Gudgeon off the hook exploits, I would say its less than 1 in 100. Of these 1%, the vast majority will be weak fish which are prone to disease and are thus better removed from the drink before they contaminate it.

3. A bully-boy sport eh? Not according to Palmer who maintains that the ‘gentle art’ is ‘relative to holiness’ and concludes ‘It makes men good tempered and quiet minded. It steadies the nerves and sweetens the understanding. It undermines vulgarity, and prompts simplicity of thought and manners’. And he should know. For those of us who feel the need to hunt but have had our machismo squashed by liberal modern-day morals, sport fishing reawakens this spirit without carnage. Better surely that we are fish botherers than murderers. A recent initiative by the National River Authority to reduce the cost of the rod licence for minors in an effort to encourage young ruffians to fish has been supported by the police force as a relevant method of reducing boredom crime.

4. Lead weights have been banned. Not surprisingly, this measure has hugely reduced the number of bird lead-stuck-in-the-throat deaths. A catch and release fisherman takes great care with his quarry, the method having developed through necessity due to decreasing fish stock from pollutants. How many products have you bought from companies dumping their waste in our rivers?

5. Angling is the only sport where the participant cannot see his target. This makes it the most skilful and challenging sport of all. Where does the archer go after he has hit his 100th perfect Bullseye? What happens to the shot putter who reaches forty and can no longer throw so far? What other sport is in no way dependent on competition for it’s success? indeed, in what other sport is the wheelchair no impediment? And boring? Oh piss off, you’re just jealous because you haven’t got any hobbies or any friends.

So there it is, my retort, and I can tell you I feel much better now. While I may not have a simple quick one-liner with which to slay the ‘get your hair cut’ brigade, I have peace of mind that what I do is not really as bad as everyone thinks. And I can rest assured that my sport will enhance my personality and settle my psyche in a way that no other sport can, and particularly any carried out by my unthinking, unimaginative, unintelligent, uninteresting critics. As the great Arthur Ransome says ‘ The good fisherman is always engaged in the active exercise of his imagination. He is the fish he catches. He, as that fish, feels the currents in the pool and pushes his way to shelter in a pocket of still water. Fishermen make fine old men. This is not surprising. They have been caught up into Nature, grow old with a good will and no hanging back, and are without misgivings about their own mortality.’

Thanks Arthur.