The Old Man and the Sand Eel

by Will Millard

  I tried to get a solid grip on the fish once more, but another violent headshake brought a tearing sound and the warming feel of fresh blood spilling across my hands. The numbing cold had dampened my pain receptors to such an extent that it took several seconds more than it should for me to realize that all the blood was my own; and several more still to discern that it was not my fingers that had been sliced on the pike’s teeth, but that one of the higher treble hooks had torn right through my trouser leg and embedded itself deep within my shin.

  Pike fishing leaves scars both real and imagined. I have two you can see: one livid white on my shin, the other, right across the cornea of my right eye, where I almost lost my sight to the hooks of a spinner while pike fishing as a teenager; but these are a small price to pay in the mind of the truly serious piker. I needed to be made of sterner stuff if I was ever to land a monster.

  I drew a curtain over my last serious attempt at pike fishing that evening: bum shuffling and whimpering my way back up the bankside of Cuckoo Drain, a hook impaled in my leg, and a 10lb pike dangling around my ankles.

  I’ve heard the pike once described as a ‘Gothic’ fish, and although I get where this reference is coming from, what with the pike’s shadowy behaviour and angular appearance, I think ‘prehistoric’ is a far fairer depiction of this truly primeval creature.

  The earliest British fossils of Esox lucius, to give the pike its Latin name, are dated at half a million years old. It is believed the fish first made its way to British shores via the North Sea land bridge, way back when the River Thames was connected to the River Rhine in the Netherlands, but the latest fossil dating of the Esox genus far predates even this, placing the pike in northern America some 80 million years earlier.

  The pike’s evolutionary masterstroke came sometime during the Cretaceous period when the early Esox developed jaws capable of swallowing far greater-sized prey than the other species within the herring–salmon order. From that moment forward the pike had set itself on an extraordinarily durable pathway that would see it survive several Ice Ages and spread its presence from America and right across Europe, eventually spanning almost the entire boreal forest region of the northern hemisphere.

  With its elongated body, sharpened head and penchant for aggression, the ‘pike’ name stuck with the fish from the Middle Ages, aptly chosen for its resemblance to the tall thrusting spear favoured by the infantrymen of the time, and used for taking down knights on horseback with ruthless efficiency and maximum bloodshed; much like the fish might, given the chance among a shoal of roach.

  The Wilson Encyclopedia describes an average size of between 5 and 12lb, with a mega-specimen topping out at over 30lb. When I was still stuck angling for my first, Roy Lewis shocked the pike-angling world with a whopping 46lb 13oz beast from Llandegfedd Reservoir in South Wales. That record still stands today, taken on little more than a small and humble-looking wooden lure called the ‘creek chub pikie’.

  There is no other fish species on these shores to have sprung quite the same degree of myth and legend as the pike. The Yorkshire terrier that didn’t make it home from its paddle in the park pond, the toothy beast that supposedly went for the ankles of a small swimming boy, the bleached bones of the 90lb fish washed up on the banks of some far-flung Irish loch – all unreliably witnessed, yet all somehow difficult to debunk completely. Just look at that image of the pike caught by Roy Lewis. It is an enormous spawn-filled female fish that appears almost as long as Roy himself. Is it such a leap in imagination to make real the violent water monsters of our childhood then?

  The answer is probably ‘Yes, it is.’ The genuinely big fish have nearly always fallen from the drains and lakes that have seen very little pike-angling pressure or human presence; the pike certainly would not attack a human without any prior provocation. In this day and age the real specimens are to be found lurking safely within trout-fishing-only reservoirs, or concealed somewhere within mile upon mile of undisturbed lake or drain. They prefer the forgotten edges of our nation, you see, the sorts of places where you could still quite easily fish for a lifetime without even laying eyes on a Wilson mega-specimen, and the big old pike can while away their lives well away from our disturbing habits.

  Big pike need food though, and lots of it – that’s why, I’m told, many of those stocked trout lakes tend to do so well in sustaining monsters – but more than that they require a healthy ecosystem and a relative lack of competition. You should never consider culling pike in order to produce a bigger, better stamp of fish, though, or to protect the other fish in the water, for that matter. Many a world-class pike venue has been destroyed by the unwise attempt to remove its resident predators, and, unless you get them all (and, really, why would you want to do that?), there will inevitably be an explosion of smaller pike that would have otherwise been controlled by the larger, cannibalistic fish. In a pike’s world, the only fish that truly controls the pike is the pike.

  I first began looking for a big pike for this book in January, but it took until the middle of the month before a sudden break in the rain seemed to offer a true chance of a catch. Overcast, grey, a slight rise in temperature from single to double digits – it wasn’t consistent with the forecast at all. I rushed from my desk and straight out to the garden pond to find my goldfish milling around the surface and even feeding. Potentially the biggest catch of the season was on.

  Pike feed at ill-defined times. You can convince yourself there are no pike at all in a place and then a small change in atmospherics brings them onto the feed and suddenly you’re in. I’ve heard of anglers catching nearly a hundred pike in just a few hours of ferocious action, then, as quickly as they are turned on, they’re all off again, often for hours, sometimes even for days. Of course, the pikers are left scratching their heads and wondering where they’re all hiding, but there is a widely held belief that these small rises in temperature can bring the pike out of their stupor. With even the goldfish showing some signs of life this morning, it was all looking very good indeed.

  The problem I faced was that it was now far too late to grab a ticket at any one of the certified big pike venues; and with all the rivers still flooded I needed to think out of the box. John Ellis. The canals, of course.

  I flicked the laptop on and used Google Maps to zoom right in on the small network of drains and canals that ran around Cardiff. The one area I was particularly interested in stumbled off a giant space of disused industrial-era docks called the Atlantic Wharf. If big pike thrived on neglect, then this place surely hid a giant. It is only about half a mile from a glitzy shopping centre but it may as well have been on Mars. The blackened remains of rusting high-tower cranes hang over this place, looming large and lifeless over the water like Jurassic-era herons. An unattractive busy main road runs right along one side of the water too, but there were big fish to be had here if you only knew where to look.

  I had already started my quest for a big pike there at the year’s turn, but I hadn’t yet had much luck. I did have some definite follows, though, predatory swirls at the surface, as my lure came back under my rod tip, and, on one occasion, a savage take tore my rubber lure clean in two, narrowly missing the hook, and leaving me with little more than the grinning head of my replica eel.

  The other people who fished there tended to be a special breed, but they were friendly enough as long as you didn’t ask too many questions about permits or carry on like a member of the Cardiff City Council.

  The first time I ventured down there I met an enormous shaven-headed man in a state of some despair: ‘Fuckers nicked all my meat and my rods in the night,’ he raged – eyes popping from their sockets and his mobile clutched firmly to his ear – I presumed to the police. ‘I was a bit pissed up last night to be fair, but they could at least have not cooked up all my fucking meat on my fucking BBQ not ten fucking metres from my fucking tent …’ He was near apoplectic with rage, which was understandable given he’d just woken to discover nearly everything he owned had been s
tolen.

  There was no fishing club looking after Atlantic Wharf back then, so the fishing was effectively free; but there is always some price to pay.

  Some of the local pike fishermen here had an uneasy relationship with both the law and the rules. A few openly admitted to fishing illegally in nature reserves and one even told me he was banned from the local Glamorgan Anglers Club for using live ducklings as bait. Grim, almost beyond belief. Eventually I was trusted enough to be shown the pictures of the pike they had caught: blurry pictures of half-cut anglers with what were quite clearly significantly large fish in their hands. Some of the pike looked to be over 25lb, perhaps one was even pushing the magic 30lb mark. ‘Just beware fishing too long alone after dark …’ I was warned, ‘… and keep an eye out for the poachers and prostitutes.’

  The Royalty stretch of the Hampshire Avon this was not.

  Poaching is a growing problem in Britain, particularly in these little-visited urban hinterlands that kiss up against large populations of people. For years I had disregarded those who talked of ‘poachers taking all the fish’ as just having fishermen’s excuses, but John Ellis had been quick to point the finger too, claiming all it takes is a replica lock key to drain an entire stretch of canal in the middle of the night and make off with fish worth upwards of £2,000. In recent times I’d encountered more less-than-formal approaches: gill nets and long-lines dumped on the banks, tragically emptied of their quarry when no one else was around.

  Many of my non-fishing friends don’t really see the point of the sport if all you are ever doing is catching fish only to put them back. I know plenty of anglers who also believe there is no harm in taking the occasional sample, but the hard reality is that our inland fish stocks would simply collapse if everyone started to take their catches home. The few places where you can do it – trout and salmon fisheries, for example – have very carefully managed and monitored restocking programmes, strict limits on your catch and fastidious attention to the paperwork every angler must complete if he or she intends to take a fish home. Our island nation is too small and too over-populated to expect our recovering fresh water to handle anything other than catch and release, and when it comes to removing pike, the top fish predator, the resultant effect on an ecosystem can be devastating. It was one of the many reasons why predator anglers are so secretive about their catches.

  I felt the canals feeding the wharf were easily my best bet for lure-fishing. The wharf was deep enough to take giant coal tankers and industrial container ships in its heyday, so this little spike in temperature wouldn’t have even registered in those depths; however, in the relative shallows of the canals, the water would be responding almost instantaneously. I hoped to find the shoals of over-wintering silverfish holed up somewhere in there, which would, in turn, be drawing the big pike up off the wharf and deep into the canal system to feed; like great white sharks on the trail of a great chum-slick of African sardines.

  I parked up with just an hour of light remaining in the day, the ‘witching hour’ for predators the world over, and headed over to a small bridge overlooking a canal. It’s hemmed in on all sides by a housing estate; a small ribbon of gently flowing water no more than ten metres in width and a few feet deep. From this point it’s only a short walk to where it spills into the vast basin of water that forms the wharf, but upstream from here the canal disappears under the ground, cutting a subterranean path until it pops up behind a posh hotel and meets its maker: the River Taff.

  I’d looked into entering those underground canal workings while researching stories for a BBC series on the river, even going so far as to find a local artist who had worked out a plan to sail them on the inflated inner tube of a tractor tyre, but the council had thwarted our plans. The king rats and giant eels of the perpetual dark would have to wait. Still, I peered hopefully off the bridge and into the water below, willing a daylight giant to materialize somewhere in the void below.

  Superficially, it couldn’t be less welcoming. Hard slabs of concrete encase this narrow patch, and the water is clogged hard with storm-swept branches that reach to the heavens with their long skeletal fingers.

  The litter here is far worse than the stuff on the Grand Union Canal, and there’s certainly no caring edge or quirky canal culture to be found in this forgotten space. The slack water teems with beer bottles, cans and plastics, and as the streetlights flickered into life, a grimy orange hue was cast right across the scene, lighting up the canal like some bargain basement red-light district.

  A series of gently expanding rings appear suddenly on the water’s surface. Even here, there are signs of wildlife. It is a shoal of feeding fish, moving around in the upper layers of water, just as I’d hoped; basking in the relative warmth, and snatching the very occasional fly or grub ensnared in the surface film. Perhaps I can dare to dream?

  Removing the four-inch rubber lure from the end of my line, I quickly switch to a tiny spinner. These topping fish are small; I don’t want to stand out too much from the crowd. I make my first cast and the water stirs with mass movement. Clearly there are a lot more silverfish here than I’d first thought. Seconds later a pluck on the line is converted into a jarring take. It feels small and awkward, possibly a perch, but more likely just a foul-hooked fish.

  Yes. I’ve accidentally punctured a pristine roach right through its silvery side. I’ve massively underestimated this place – there are quite literally thousands of fish holed up in here; there’s barely room in the water to work my spinner without risking hooking one in error.

  Another cast sees me lodged into something solid and inanimate on the canal bottom. I yank hard in an attempt to free the hooks and spook something very large to the left of my tightened line. It sends a V-shaped bow wave down the water and scatters hundreds of frightened roach across the surface in its wake.

  It just has to be a pike.

  A man with a pram filled with plastic bags wanders past, eyes down, followed by a jogger whose music is cranked up so loud I can almost hear the lyrics of the R&B song blasting from his headphones. I re-cast and immediately hook into a tiny pike. It writhes on the line as I ease it in to the canal’s side, splashing the surface and disturbing the water. That was a very bad move on this little pike’s part: with little warning the V-shaped wave is back; but this time it’s coming straight for us.

  Time slows and my heart rolls up towards my gullet. A monstrous pike emerges right beneath its victim. The little pike, the big pike and I, we all know what is coming next. In a flash the larger has ingested the smaller, spinner and all, without any of it needing to touch the sides.

  As my line is still attached to the small pike, we both now have quite a problem. Realizing it is tethered the monster projects itself clean out of the water in fright, using the power of its tail alone to skip impressively along the surface before crashing back into the pool with a thunderclap. I receive a full view of its extraordinary length during these acrobatics; it is in excess of 10lb, perhaps not a big fish in terms of big pike, but a true giant for such a tiny canal.

  I try to keep tension on the line but a microsecond of slack sees the hook dislodged and, as the fish belly-flops its way back into the water, I realize we are sadly no longer in contact.

  A steady rain blisters the water as night falls hard and cold. The supreme power of the pike’s re-entry has sent shock waves slapping into the canal’s concrete sides. Briefly, a single tennis ball is projected up onto the walkway. It rolls a wet trail for a few feet before landing back into the murk with a ‘plop’.

  I walk downstream towards the wharf breathing heavily. I need to pull myself together, fast. There is still a chance that the fish hasn’t yet felt the steel of my hooks – it might just take another bait, but I know I must rest the swim before attempting anything else. Both the pike and I need time to consider our next moves.

  Clearly, I’m on edge. A grey heron explodes from a thicket at my ankles and I momentarily leave my body in fright. Come on, Will, it’s only a f
ish. Except it wasn’t, that fish was a miracle out in that squash-court-sized patch of water, and right now, in this very moment, I’m probably the only person in the world that even knows it exists.

  In the desolate car park just before the wharf, a fight between two drug dealers breaks out. I try not to catch their eye as they scream each other down about some aborted deal. With their identical enamel-white parka jackets and fur-lined hoods they look like a pair of duelling swans, puffing out their chests and jostling for territory. I duck down and take a couple of speculative casts into the darkness of the wharf, snagging some weed and finding a sense of calm just in the process of removing the soft green matting from the trio of hooks at the end of my spinner. It’s soon time to go back and try again.

  I underhand-cast the spinner back into the same spot and get an instant slamming response from the monster. He’s ready, and this time so am I. I heave hard against its bulk, in my mind setting the hooks securely into its fang-filled mouth, but, again, I feel the gut-wrenching give of a slack, fish-free line.

  I don’t understand. Under a downstream bridge a pair of boys smoke marijuana from a roll-up they’re sharing. Its sweet smell drifts on the night air right down to my latest disaster. Edgily, they flick their lighter on and off. They haven’t noticed my fish, my crisis or me. I reel up and to my surprise discover that yet another small roach has found its way onto the hooks.

  This roach is in a truly sorry state: heavily lacerated with a severed spinal cord and a frozen expression. It has been thoroughly mangled by the pike. Stone dead on arrival. Gently, I place a hook through its lower lip and flick it back in. This is now my last chance.