by Will Millard
I had contacted him a few weeks before the great phone-in but there didn’t seem any point following up, given I hadn’t managed to get a ticket. The email read:
Hi Will
Just to let you know there are guided boats available on 5, 7 and 16 Feb with me as the guide. This is a new initiative by Bristol Water.
If you want one of these boats then ring Chew ASAP.
Kind regards
John Horsey
Frantically, I hammered the now very familiar number for the Lodge. No answer. I left a voicemail, wrote an email, and tried to get through four more times, before finally, mercifully, I heard that glorious West Country accent once more: ‘Hello, Chew Lakes.’
The words of my request spilled from my mouth at such a pace I was surprised the man on the end of the receiver could even figure out what I was trying to say.
‘Ooh, I’m not sure.’ I could hear some riffling of papers in the background. ‘Possibly they are all booked out, possibly there is one left.’
I tried to sound cool, but it was pretty difficult given how badly I wanted this to work out. My heart was firmly in my mouth as the riffling continued, back-dropped with the occasional ‘hmm’.
Eventually he answered.
‘Yep, one left.’
16 February 2016. My date with pike-fishing destiny.
It was more money than I’d spent on a single day’s fishing in my entire life, but I was over the moon. I had my ticket and I was absolutely determined to make the very most of it. All my ethics about chasing pounds and ounces and being part of a pike-fishing circus were firmly buried; I was boarding the clown car with a front-row seat for the big top and the undisputed ringmaster for hire. I just prayed we had a run of good weather.
The days quickly passed and I started to feel increasingly nervous. A feeling of inadequacy I hadn’t felt since I was listening to Dad in the stairwell started to creep into the back of my mind. Am I actually up to these fish? I opted to spend yet more of my dwindling savings on tackle: bigger lures and a beefy braided line that felt like woven rope.
Extraordinary reports from Chew began to filter in. By all accounts this was shaping up to be one of the best February pike trials of all time. By the time my big day eventually came around, twenty pike over the 30lb barrier had already been snared, with two truly enormous fish topping out the scales at 41lb. To give that some sort of perspective, Martin Bowler, one of the best all-round anglers in Britain (who also just happens to be John Wilson’s nephew), landed a 34lb 12oz fish and commented to the Angling Times: ‘If I’d caught that fish at any other venue it would be a safe bet that it would be the best of the day, but I think the day I was fishing it was only third-biggest.’ One man even commented on Chew’s pike-fishing Facebook group that he wasn’t sure it was even worth him posting a picture of his fish as ‘it was only 28lb’.
Twenty-eight pounds. Six pounds bigger than my biggest all-time pike. Not even worth posting. I spooled up my strongest reel with my all-new braided line and selected the three most powerful rods I owned from the garden shed.
‘I remember a fisheries scientist saying to me, “A pike doesn’t know how big he is.” I thought that was a silly thing to say, but actually it isn’t, is it? It’s not like they’ve got a mirror to look in, is it?’
I liked John Horsey immediately. He was a bright, liberal man, with an exceptional knowledge and enthusiasm for his sport. His heart lay with fly-fishing, particularly in competitions where he had captained England at world and European levels, and had even won the World Championships back in 2009; however, unlike many professional fly-fishermen, he wasn’t the sort of person who would turn his nose up at coarse fishermen purely on principle. Plus he had a 40lb pike to his boat, caught, remarkably, on a fly. For all of that, I was extremely grateful.
His point, regarding the pike and the mirror, was that big fish don’t necessarily change their feeding habits just because they are big fish. They are able to take bigger baits of course, but it is prudent not to assume their diet exclusively matches their size. Almost every animal is still partial to the food it grew up on, and therefore you shouldn’t be surprised if, every once in a while, you encounter a fish of far greater size than your diminutive bait would expect; the biggest carp I’ve ever caught simply swallowed a single kernel of sweetcorn.
‘Everyone always says it has to be a heavily stocked trout water to break a record, where there’s plenty of big trout for the big pike to eat, but I don’t believe that’s strictly true,’ explained John.
With his shock of white hair hidden beneath a baseball cap and neatly trimmed goatee beard, he had an air of the ‘rock star’ about him. ‘Chew is the best pike fishery in Britain today because the levels of biodiversity here are exceptional. It’s not just the pike; everything in this water is big: big trout, big tench, big eels, big roach; it’s all thanks to the rich aquatic insect life that lives and breeds here’ – he cast out an arm across the water in front of us – ‘especially the black chironomids. The pike here are full of them.’
I had to look up ‘chironomid’ later. Essentially they are a variety of midge and closely resemble small mosquitoes, but don’t let that put you off; this species is non-biting and, according to the Natural History Museum, they are a vitally important indicator species of the health of any water. They are extremely sensitive to any kind of pollutant or acidity in water, so their presence in numbers is a good sign of a first-rate environment; fantastic news to fish of all sizes, from giant pike to minute stickleback, which readily gorge on the flies and their larvae. John mentioned an autopsy on a mid-sized dead pike that revealed a stomach literally crammed with these small, jet-black insects, and my friends, who had fly-fished Chew in the past, claimed to have actually seen the pike scooping the insects right out of the lake, breaching the surface like packs of dolphins.
Chew is just that sort of place – where accepted logic is warped to such a degree that you genuinely start to believe in miracles. The lake looked truly serene at first light and sight. A clear, deep-blue morning had left a light ripple, and a blanket of wispy fog was playing on the water’s surface. Chew dwarfed the Cardiff docks, of course. It appeared oceanic in comparison, but it wasn’t as intimidating as I’d thought it might be.
As I perused the map on the back of my fishing permit I noted it resembled a hen’s chick in profile, albeit with a slightly oversized head. There were a few attractive-looking bays, a pair of trench-like ‘legs’, and a large island, placed somewhere around the eye of the bird: lots of potential fish-holding areas that broke up the immensity of the venue then.
With John I was far from fishing blind at any rate. He purposefully hung back to see where all the other boats would go. ‘Pike fishermen can be a bit like sheep,’ he declared, placing his tackle in the bottom of the boat, ‘they all tend to go where big fish have been caught that week and will follow each other around throughout the day. It’s always best to give them all a wide berth and find your own place to start. There’s no rush anyway; the best time on this lake is often the late afternoon to the sunset.’
John elected to start just left of Wick Green Point, a slight protrusion on the far bank from the Lodge, somewhere around the centre of the chick’s back. It was lined with a thick growth of reeds that had been bleached a starchy white in the winter air. Instinctively, I would have taken our boat right in among those reeds, looking for a take from a pike hidden up against the beds. This, I learnt, would not have found me a record.
‘These are big open-water fish,’ explained John, ‘they don’t even know the meaning of the word ambush. The average depth here is only about thirteen feet, so quite shallow, but you’ve got to get the bait down there to catch the really big ones. They won’t come up to get it, especially not when it is cold like this. They are immensely fat, and immensely lazy.’
I picked up the pair of lures that I’d bought brand new for this trip and handed them over to John for inspection. They felt sticky, like they were
fresh out of the mould, and were utterly free of blemishes or experience; I was like a young boy on his first day at secondary school, conscious that my sparkling-new pencil case was missing the requisite band insignias, amorous messages or pictures of cocks, which all the older, far cooler boys seemed to have.
One of the lures was the perfect replica of a small trout. I thought, given this was a trout lake, that was a fair choice. The second was a luminescent-looking perch, like the fish had spent its days swimming around nuclear fallout before finally making its way to my tackle box. I couldn’t imagine what had drawn me towards that one; it looked hideous.
John eyed them both up before giving something of a damning verdict: ‘Well, I wouldn’t go with that perch, Will, not right away anyway, and the pike won’t recognize that as a rainbow trout either. They’ve never seen a rainbow trout under two pounds in this place.’
I hadn’t even made my first cast and I was already on the back foot. John, perhaps sensing I felt a little downcast, revisited the trout. ‘They might just take it thinking it’s a roach though; it is very white and, after all, all you need in this lake is just one take.’
That was good enough for me. I hooked it up to a strong wire trace and took a deep breath. It had taken an awful lot just to get to this point. I cast out well away from the reeds, watched my braided line snake out a little before feeling the lure strike the lake’s bottom. John was right; it really was shallow. I began my retrieve, keeping it slow, steady and tight to the bed, as instructed. This was it. I was finally fishing Chew.
Five minutes later I felt the telltale thump and headshake of a predator. A brief but solid fight brought an impeccable little pike of about 4lb to the edge of the boat. It was a nerve settler, the piscatorial equivalent of a pre-match pep talk, and there was even a small, but satisfactory, tear in the side of my new trout now. Perhaps I was worthy after all?
Soon afterwards a spiteful wind picked up off the Mendip Hills, rocking our boat and biting sharply into my bare hands. Of course, Chew wasn’t going to let me have it all my own way. We pulled up our anchor and headed for shelter behind a large, semi-flooded island. ‘Blimey, John, there’s plenty of boats down here.’ A quick head count revealed well over half of all the boats on the lake were also taking refuge, strung out in a long line like the floating buoys of a giant gill net.
I blew some hot air into my hands. ‘Don’t be fooled. They’re not down here just to stay warm,’ said John, with a quiet intensity, ‘this was where that forty-one-pound giant was caught last week.’ He selected a very, very large, fresh-looking mackerel from his bait box and fixed it firmly to a treble hook. ‘I know, because I was here.’ He cast the mackerel right out into the middle of the channel and tightened down his line till his fat, red-topped float could be seen bouncing happily along the surface.
I settled into a trance-like state: casting my lure, retrieving, focusing in on the play of the line through the water, and arching my neck occasionally to check our floats were still in place. A curious sensation came over me. It was a feeling that comes along with such infrequency that it feels like a sort of temporary psychosis, yet it strikes with such undeniable force that it is impossible to ignore.
As sure as King Canute knew he could not really turn the tides, I became convinced the pike were coming on to feed.
‘We’re going to get a fish here, John,’ I said, venturing to vocalize my forecast, in spite of the lack of any discernible evidence. It was a gut instinct, a primeval intuition long since buried beneath several thousand generations of comfortable living and comfort eating, but I was utterly convinced I was right.
One of the men on the string of boats suddenly stood bolt upright with a rod buckling in his hand. I knew it.
We watched as his boat partner threw a massive black net from port to starboard, like a man wrestling with some giant sail on an ocean-going clipper. The angler started to pump the fish towards him; the tide was turning against this pike; soon it was subdued somewhere down by the engine block. They shook hands. It was a good one, at least 20lb in weight.
‘My float is doing something funny.’ Instantly, I snapped my gaze from the drama unfolding in the other boat. John was staring out at his float, which was now beginning to wheel.
When I was sixteen I learnt how big pike can often feed in spells. I remember that day clearly, my legs whirring as I ran away from the riverbank and back towards Grandad’s bungalow. Behind me, submerged in a net, I had left a pike. A proper one, not a small jack or an emaciated summer fish, but a fat female that almost tore my rod into the deep alongside my smelt dead bait. The fish in itself was remarkable, but of far greater significance was the other, even bigger, pike that lay in the net right beside it.
In just ten minutes I had smashed my personal best, twice. I was in pike-fishing nirvana and I prayed Grandma had film in her camera as I exploded into the kitchen.
Grandma took my photo with both fish. ‘Well done, boy!’ shouted Grandad, giving me the thumbs-up I’d hoped for. He was off to play carpet bowls, he said; fishing in the bleak mid-winter wasn’t really his thing.
I knew that was a special day. Over 30lb of pike in just two casts. Sometimes I feel I’ve been paying for that piece of good fortune ever since.
John’s float started kiting hard to the left. This really was it.
‘You take it …’ John pulled the rod from its rest and handed it down to me in an act of extraordinary generosity. ‘Really, are you sure?’ I stuttered, and we had a brief and ridiculously British standoff, at the absolutely critical moment.
‘Yes! Go for it, Will!’ he eventually shouted, imploring me to take up the rod.
I didn’t need to be asked for a third time. I reeled up the slack line, sank the tip and swept the rod upwards.
But there was nothing. No riposte. No bone-churning heavyweight thump. Just air and slack. I reeled down once more and gave it another slam, but it was useless. The pike had already let go.
‘That was the big mackerel bait, wasn’t it?’ I asked, half hoping John might answer in the negative, or just assure me it was possible a trout could have chewed the bait from the hook. ‘Yes, Will.’
My chance had been and gone. As plausible as it is that a 40lb pike might feed on a tiny chironomid, there was no way a small fish was ever squeezing a 1lb mackerel bait down its gullet. As quickly as the feeding spell had been triggered, the big pike turned themselves off once more.
There was excited chatter among the boats as we pulled into the docks that sunset. A Chew employee placed a thick boot on the side of our boat as we drifted into the melee. ‘There were seven thirties out today, lads!’ he revealed gleefully. ‘How did you guys get on?’
The van’s windscreen wipers squealed as I fought with the drizzle on the drive back home. I wonder how big that fish really was? I’ll never know now of course, but I felt oddly calm.
When I was a boy I recall Grandad telling me a story about a great fish he once hooked that ran with an unstoppable force until it emptied his reel of a hundred metres of line and eventually broke free, leaving his rod hanging limp like a washing line cracked in a storm.
I asked him to recall this anecdote many times, both because I loved the idea of the mysterious giant in our waters, but also because I was unable to process how he could recall such a tale of calamity and yet appear so at peace. Perhaps in the retelling his demeanour would one day buckle, betraying his true feelings of raw hurt and resentment; but, of course, it never did.
Grandad, I realize now, was simply enriched by the experience of angling. His inner tranquillity came from a confidence emboldened by the knowledge that when it comes to hooking a big fish, a degree of loss is simply inevitable. It was not something to resent or regret; it was simply an acceptable part of what it meant to be a true fisherman, and a better person.
I would return to Chew if I ever get the chance again, but for all the ticketing process, the beefed-up tackle, circumstance and ceremony, could I reasonably say my da
y today had brought me more pleasure than the pike I had caught in the canal? Perhaps anglers’ success is not determined only by the sheer size of the fish they catch, but the manner of, and pleasure to be had from, the pursuit and chase.
It had taken me over twenty years to learn the wisdom Grandad was once trying to impart, but I’d understood in the end. I would turn my attentions to fish of smaller proportions for the rest of this fishing year, and leave the giants for another time and place.
It was almost the close of the winter of ’92 before I caught my first pike. As is often the way with these things, the fight of my fears was over before it began.
My spinner approached a hole within a cluster of reeds and a small pike materialized hot on its heels. I hastened my retrieve, and the fish, believing its meal was about to escape, near launched itself out of the water to engulf the lure.
Of all the pike I have caught, it was by far the easiest to land. I hooked it less than a foot from the bank and simply sprinted backwards, tearing the fish clean from the water and almost getting run over by a passing car in the process.
Unfortunately, behind the wheel was my Year Four primary school teacher, Mrs Hills. I could tell I was in for a massive rollicking by the steam coming from her brakes and ears, so I quickly scooped up my pike and sprinted off before she could even lay a hand on her car door handle.
It didn’t occur to me then that this fish was merely a juvenile, or that I had been extremely lucky not to lose it or snap my line with my terrible antics. As far as I was concerned I now had living, breathing proof that Dad and Grandad were not always right. Pike were extremely hard to catch but I did have the strength to do it on my own.
In a quiet, teacher-free corner of the Creek I slipped my little pike back into the shallows. I couldn’t possibly have realized it at the time, but, as it kicked its tail to disappear once and for all, it was taking a vital piece of my childhood down into the murk with it.
