The Old Man and the Sand Eel

by Will Millard

There were times I felt like we were still all cast adrift in flooded Fens. I grew up in a Bermuda Triangle of land where the county borders of Lincolnshire, Norfolk and Cambridgeshire all meet. We had one train line a half an hour’s drive away, a scattering of main roads and definitely no motorways, and our nearest McDonald’s took two bus journeys and a change at Wisbech. In the Norfolk Broads or on the north Norfolk coast it is all part of the charm, but visitors rarely came to my neighbourhood through choice, and yet I still love it here. There is a sense of the truly mystical to the big skies and open fields, and the greatest sunsets and starry nights I will ever see have always been here. A comic once said if you stand on a milk crate you can see the curvature of the earth. As a child I would sneak out the back of the house in the depths of winter and climb the last apple tree in the orchard. From my vantage point I could see across the earthen sugar beet fields, stripped bare of their crop and frozen solid like the sea. I used to imagine it was the point where the world was stitched together, an elongated patch atop the earth’s surface sewn in the same way my school trousers were when I holed the kneecap.

  Fenland people are mocked, of course. We are the uneducated, slack-jawed inbreds. ‘NFN’ – ‘Normal for Norfolk’ – the outsiders like to joke. Folk-of-the-flat interned in a land where people go mad because of the lack of hills. Later the madness was actually attributed to malaria from the swamps, but we never shed the rest of the character stains, and everywhere I go people like to poke fun about where I’m from. It doesn’t bother me, though. I liked the people I grew up with here, and I actually felt sorry for people that took the piss out of us, as I knew they had missed out. Most of all, I liked the adult contentment of feeling small in a vast, unbroken landscape. I am grateful to this land: for the respect and interest in water it has given me, the lack of fear and sense of control I have in the wild. I now realize that it is something special, and not something simply innate in everyone.

  Perhaps I am indulging my nostalgia now I no longer live here. I couldn’t wait to leave this place when I did. I felt a sense of suffocation as I grew older, that the whole place was getting perversely smaller and more inward-looking with each year of my life that passed. New Year’s Eve and when Glastonbury was on as a teenager were always the worst. Watching mass celebrations on the television I would feel frustrated and jealous of everyone else. Worse still I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were the sorts of people that would never be invited to the party. However, a decade after all of my friends and I had been released from the Fens and headed to jobs in the big cities of Britain, I realized that it was now that we were actually trapped for real and that what we had as kids would never be ours again. I never really felt at home in cities, and thought that any day soon someone in a suit would tap me on the shoulder and remind me where I was from, that I was wearing the emperor’s new clothes, that it was time to go home now and that my performance was over. It took another ten years before I realized everyone else working in the city feels exactly the same.

  According to the Wilson Encyclopedia, the ‘Roach is the most commonly caught British freshwater shoal fish.’ It was the footsoldier of the Creek, the fish that made up the bulk of my keepnet as a child, but, as a result of their sheer volume and small size, I feel they never really received the respect they deserve. Coming home, it had to be the roach I went for.

  The eyes are a virulent, violent red in colour, but there is something of the underdog spirit in the way the rest of its curved and downward-facing mouth appears. Its neat head fronts a classically fish-shaped body, and with white-silver sides and orange-red fins it is, unfortunately, the prime target for live-baiting for pike. A Finnish friend of mine even uses their eyeballs to catch perch: ‘But they shimmer with an animation you just can’t get from any bait,’ he said, in response to my disgust at his practice. As I said, the roach deserves more respect.

  Before the opening day of the coarse season on 16 June I would walk the Creek and look under the bridges at Popham’s Eau. Thousands of roach in great shoals were to be seen basking in the sunshine together and the day couldn’t come quick enough when we could try and catch them. The greatest catch I ever made came in that opening week. I was on the River Delph at Welney with Grandad, Dad and my friend Lee. We had happened upon a truly vast shoal of roach that would not stop biting. We baited with maggots and threw in breadcrumbs by the handful till we had precipitated a feeding frenzy so great that even when we ran out of free-feed they still just kept on coming. They continued to bite through pike attacks, they even continued to bite when I fell in. It was simply an incredible day’s fishing, and when it came to tip our keepnets up and return the roach to the river I can still remember that feeling of amazement that such a great quantity of fish could be living in such a small patch of river.

  Numbers, though, are one thing. There were other days when the roach came on strong for a time, but, out of the thousands and thousands that came to my hook, the biggest I ever landed was well under the 2lb mark. Jack Hargreaves writes: ‘It took me thirty years to catch a two-pound roach, even fishing in the best southern roach-waters.’ The current record roach, standing at 4lb 4oz, was caught from a lake in Northern Ireland, and the only river to feature any fish in the current top ten record roach list is the Stour in Dorset. Truly, the Fens were never likely to trouble the roach record books then, but some very fine roach have been landed here, many fish over 2lb, and I even once heard of a fish in excess of 3lb coming from the Great Ouse near Ely. In angling, there is always a chance, but, really, how much did I actually care by this stage?

  I approached the outskirts of my village a little before dawn. My entire childhood world had just been compressed into a little under an hour in the car, but fifteen years after I had left it was heartening to discover my village had hardly changed.

  I chose to drive the long way to Popham’s Eau so I could pass both houses we had lived in. The first, a beautiful Georgian doctor’s house in the middle of the village, had electronic Christmas candles in the window; the second, on the outskirts, had a new shed on one side, and that seemed to be the sum of the modifications. I drove beside the Creek, noting the nonsensical new sign that declared it the ‘Nene–Ouse Navigation Link’, then on past the butcher’s, the hairdresser’s, the corner shop and Navrady’s, which still sells the best fish and chips in Britain. Out towards the end of the village I closed in on Grandad’s place but flicked the indicator to signal right, just before I made it to his bungalow. Following the nail-straight road towards the Sixteen Foot Bank I headed instead towards his spiritual home, travelling just a few hundred metres before pulling into a small lay-by beside a field.

  You wouldn’t know the river was here in light or dark. The pancake-flat landscape creates an optical illusion that hides Popham’s Eau perfectly in its dip, but I knew it was there. I opened the boot and lifted out a large bucket filled with groundbait and a couple of tubs of maggots and casters. It was cold but not as cold as it used to be at this time of year. When I was a child the winters here could be savage, days of sub-zero temperatures would freeze the fields solid and turn the flooded Welney Washes into a giant ice rink that produced many a champion speed skater, but the walk along the edge of the field towards our spot was still just as long as I remember.

  The fen drains intimidate some anglers. They appear as a blank canvas, miles of unrelenting uniformity in both directions with very few obvious fish-holding features to cast at. When Grandad came here he would walk from his bungalow, across the road and alongside a small orchard between the field and the river. He followed a fence line to a concrete post at its end. Here he would tie off a length of rope for safety and, effectively, abseil his way down the bank to the water’s edge. That was where I needed to be and I did eventually find the post, still standing proud; but it would take till the sun was fully up for me to realize the fence and the entire orchard were all long gone. One solitary old apple tree remained, surrounded by long grass.

  I grip the cold conc
rete post and feel an overwhelming sense of belonging. I used to sit right here when I was old enough to come to the Eau on my own. I would wait for him, his heavy steps along the bank, his ‘all right, my beaut’ greeting. It would never come again now, but I can still feel his presence here, far more than I could at his funeral service, or by holding his rods or reading his books. This is where we both once belonged. Wet mist soaks the banks. I had been nervous walking here, warning myself repeatedly to take my time and watch my step, that one slip in the darkness could see me plummet from height and into the drain, but the post makes me feel secure and the banks are nothing like as steep as I found them as a child. I move down easily and quickly towards the water’s side.

  I doubt many people have been here since I last fished this spot with Grandad all those years ago. The bed of common reeds on this bank stand some eight foot high, forming a caramel-yellow fence between me and the water, but there is still a gap just big enough for me to squeeze into my seat and cast my roach tackle. I begin rolling apple-sized balls of groundbait laced with maggots and casters. The sluice gates are open downstream at Denver so the water is pushing through at a real clip, plus there is twelve foot of deep water in front of me: if I want to guarantee the balls make it to the bottom of the river I will have to squeeze them really tight. This is where I want the roach shoals to find them, and then, once the shoals are here and feeding confidently, I’ll flick out a hook. I must remember to keep the bait going in, though – it won’t last long in this flow and I’ll want to hold the fish here for as long as I possibly can. ‘It’s not little and often, it’s a lot and often, Will’, that’s what Grandad would have said had he been next to me now; then he would have told his old story about the fishing match he once lost because he only brought ten kilos of groundbait with him. ‘Don’t be afraid to keep it going in, as once the roach are gone you’ll never get them back.’ I throw the bait in as accurately as I can and return to the car for the rods.

  Two hours slide by and the sun gently rises without bringing much warmth. The river elects to retain its misty coat and small jenny wrens buzz around in the reeds like hummingbirds. On the far bank a pair of swans dance neck to neck out across the water, but mostly it is very quiet. I didn’t realize how much I miss the silence. The real fenlands personify a rare brand of solitude. Many can’t hack it. I can understand that and I’ve always felt for the occupants of the remote farmhouses out here, miles from people and each other. Clumps of rotting water lily leaves float past on the flow. The living plant that formed them is firmly on the retreat now, back towards the silty riverbed where it will safely wait until the weather warms once more. In the spring the lily beds are dense and sometimes many metres thick. I used to love fishing off these lilies. It produced some of our finest fish, but a monster lived in there too, a fish that contained unstoppable power. It was our Moby-Dick. I hooked it just once; Grandad managed it several times, of course, but neither of us ever saw that beast – it simply tore the line from our reels and straightened our hooks right out. Looking back, we never once scaled our gear up to actually attempt to land the creature; we simply tolerated its occasional intrusion, probably in much the same way as it tolerated us. Many years later a young lad from the neighbouring village of Three Holes landed a carp well in excess of 20lb from this very stretch of water; perhaps that was all the legend had ever amounted to, but we never liked to think so.

  I have set up for the roach exactly as Grandad taught me, with one of his handsome handmade floats, thick and well weighted, set at twelve feet in depth with the bulk of my shot strung out close to a small hook. I want to get the bait right down in the river, but if I don’t get a bite down on the river bed that doesn’t mean the roach are definitely not present. I’ll just have to adjust the float and bring my bait off the bottom a little, an inch or two every ten minutes or so, just to check that they aren’t shoaling a little higher up and intercepting all my groundbait as it sinks through the water column. Even with the heavy float and weights, I still have to steady the tackle in the flow, mending the line almost as if I were float-fishing the River Taff. I keep the bait trickling in with one hand and fix my eye firmly on the bright-red tip of the float for any possible indication of arriving roach.

  Roach can be extraordinarily cute when they take the bait and sometimes a gentle bite might only register as a tickle on the float tip. In his prime Grandad could seemingly catch roach without any indication whatsoever, though: he would give a sudden crack of his wrist and there the roach would be, writhing on his hook as if spirited there by some unseen force. When the poet Ted Hughes wrote of float-fishing in 1967 he commented that ‘your whole being rests lightly on the float’. That’s the state you must look to achieve to be a truly successful float-fisher like Grandad, a condition of such intense concentration that there is nothing more in life than you and your float; when a pulse, a flick, a tremble on that tip will register in your body as if an earthquake has struck under your tackle box. It sounds tense – it really isn’t, and, even if you fall short of such a lofty goal, float-fishing still offers its junior practitioners a shot at pure escapism. Staring at a float erodes stress at a far greater rate than any trip to the gym, pub or psychiatrist’s couch ever will. It alleviates anxiety and leaves the angler fixed within a world where there are no bills to pay, no pieces of work to deliver and no problems at home. Time both slows down and speeds up. You can spot micro-details like how a cloud of nymphs expands and contracts on a river’s surface, or how a kingfisher dramatically throws its neck forward as it strikes the water, but while observing the translucence on the wing of some damsel, or watching a toad crawl in animated slow motion, you suddenly realize it is getting dark and that you didn’t even touch your lunchtime sandwiches.

  I always feel better after a day’s float-fishing, even when I miss all my bites, and if I were allowed to fish only one method for the rest of my life then the float would be it.

  I tried to settle into the rhythm of my float that morning but it was impossible to get over the piece of my personal history I was sat in. Why did Grandad fish here almost exclusively for the last twenty years of his life? I had always put it down to the Eau’s close proximity to his bungalow, but he really could have lived just about anywhere in the village. I blew some hot air and life back into my fingers. Popham’s Eau didn’t have the obvious aesthetics of the Creek even; you had to look hard for both the beauty and the fish down here. Maybe that was part of it, the idea that it was a bigger challenge. The fish here were definitely bigger if you did find them but I knew there was more at play here too.

  I flicked a lily pad off the float. I never want to return to fishing just one set of venues for just one fish, but the immense enjoyment to be had at seeing a river change its shape and character from just one vantage point seemed pretty clear. Only by returning to the same place over and over can you see that no one day is ever the same as the next. Watching a river change its character through the seasons somehow ballasts us as anglers and people. It reminds us of our own mortality in the face of natural forces that are out of our control. It should not be an intimidating or frightening prospect. There is great comfort to be found in the discovery of something larger than your life. I can very well imagine that bearing witness to the changes in your grandchildren has a similar effect. Eventually we all get left behind, of course, but at least we can take steps to make sure that when we do go the things we love continue to grow without us around. Grandad kept his grandchildren, and this place, close. I know he was proud of us all, and now, against all odds, I’ve found my way right back here to check all is well on his behalf. I bet he always knew I would as well, the silly old sod.

  Jiang Taigong was a statesman and strategist who lived in ancient China in the second millennium before Christ. According to legend, he had served the tyrannical Zhouwang, the last king of the Shang Dynasty. Zhouwang was a debauched slave owner who took enormous pleasure in torturing, then executing, anyone who objected to his rule. Jiang
Taigong hated him with every inch of his being and was desperate to overthrow the despot. However, despite being an expert in military strategy, Jiang Taigong was old and had no army to call on.

  Jiang Taigong left his position with the king, but knew that one day his special talents would be needed to defeat him. He took to fishing and lived in seclusion for many years. As time slipped by it became clear to those who lived around the riverbank where he fished that Jiang Taigong never actually seemed to catch anything; in fact, on closer inspection, they discovered he wasn’t actually fishing with a hook at all. Jiang Taigong believed that the fish, when they were ready, would come to him of their own volition. And so it was that King Wen of the powerful Zhou state found Jiang Taigong, at the ripe old age of eighty, fishing without his hook and, through pure curiosity alone, engaged this peculiar man in conversation. The king soon realized that Jiang Taigong was a uniquely gifted person, as well as a military expert, and hired him as his mentor. Together they would go on to overthrow Zhouwang and eventually establish the legendary Zhou dynasty throughout China, the longest dynasty in Chinese history.

  Jiang Taigong gave out the image of a man fishing, when in fact he was waiting for an army to overthrow King Zhou. It was a cunning piece of sleight of hand: he had a hidden purpose that was heavily masked by an obvious one, but it took him time. The morals of the story: good things come to those who wait, and things aren’t always as they seem.

  My bite alarm has just gone off.

  Gently, I place my roach rod down on its rests, leaving my seat behind as the bleeps start to sing out in a string. Forgive me, readers, for slightly pulling the wool over your eyes with the roach-fishing lark, and forgive me, Grandad, for the blatant use of technology in your treasured spot, but hidden at the end of the reed bed a heavy rod baited with a single smelt has been lying in wait this entire time.