"We Anglers All Love One Another"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 69, 18 October 1940, Page 18

"We Anglers All Love One Another"

In Which "IRIDEUS" Dispels Another Cherished Illusion

--- Three weeks ago, you: may remember, we published-to the great joy of many anglers as well as of ordinary mortals-an account by " Irideus" of how he intended to spend the first day of the fishing season. Here is the sequel

OST of us know and some of us remember, but none of us can be reminded too often that Things are Seldom What They Seem, if one may be permitted to coin a phrase which has as potent an application to the business of angling as it has to the equally sorry business of living. Moreover, out of painful experience I am persuaded that were there but no angling at all the manifold vicissitudes of living would be by so much diminished. To subscribe to the belief that angling is the contemplative man’s recreation, as the phrase hath it, is. as grevious an error as to regafd the strawberries and milkmaids of Walton’s imagination as its necessary and inevitable concomitants. For angling does not belong to a cloud-cuckoo-land of sunny meadows, old-world inns and sheets that smell of lavender. Rather is it an affair of rain and tempest, of tribulation and that hope deferred which maketh the heart sick. Do not*think in your unwisdom that I exaggerate. I know, for I have been an angler. I might add that I have very grave doubts about continuing to be an angler. As you are aware, I am grown somewhat old and fat and I find it more convenient, if hardly encouraging, to look back over the road I have come, rather than to stumble ahead. In any case, I shall not be fishing again for some little time as a result of a slight accident which occurred last Saturday, and I think I could not do better than employ my involuntary leisure in trying to give my friends a picture of angling in its true colours and proper perspective. What Really Happened. But first a word of explanation. I am happy to say that my prophetic soul was for once over-pessimistic in its vision of a tragic ending to my first angling expedition of the new season. It is true that the weather was of a quality which could be adequately described only by an Australian with long experience in the fighting services. It is also frue that I caught no fish save those which had to be returned to their proper element. But my good friend, Col. Gaffem (ret’d) caught none either, nor did I spend the day unwittingly fishing water that he had left

behind him. Indeed, he had not started fishing when I overtook him, and any animosity which I entertained at being to that extent anticipated subsided upon being informed that there was in his hip flask sufficient whisky to compensate for having left my own at home. Such piscatorial camaraderie was not, unfortunately, characteristic of the entire day. It is with regret that I have to record that the egregious Batecan had anticipated both of us and that, not content with having poached the water on which the gallant Colonel and I wasted most of a wet and cheerless day, he insisted on showing us the miserable, starved specimens of fish which he had snared. "This Brutal Outrage " In justice, it should be recorded that we passed over this piece of disgusting swank with commendable calm. But, alas, once a cad, always a cad, and when the Colonel politely but firmly pointed out to Batecan that his largest fish was a poor and ill-favoured kelt which in common humanity and decency should have been returned to the water or at least buried under cover of darkness, and that the others could not be made to conform to the size limit by any stretch of their vertebrae or our imaginations, the ruffian had the ineffable impertinence to declare that they compared favourably with any which he had seen in our baskets and that at any rate they were not caught on worm as were certain fish taken last season by two anglers who would be nameless. This brutal outrage upon the sensibilities of my old and gallant friend had the inevitable result. For perhaps thirty seconds human nature fought against the ingrained self-discipline which comes from half-a-century’s’ soldiering, then human nature broke through, and with that blood-curdling roar which is known on every parade ground from Peshawur to Poona and from Cape Comorin to the eternal snows of the Himalayas, he hurled himself upon Batecan and bore him to the ground. One Month, Without the Option A regrettable reaction, perhaps, but to you, if you are an angler, an understandable one. It was perhaps unfortunate that the same view was not taken by the presiding magistrate, or we might have got off with a fine. As it was my gallant

friend and I were sentenced to one month, without the option, for committing assault with intent to do actual bodily harm to one, Percival Batecan, We have, therefore, as I mentioned earlier, a period of involuntary leisure at our disposal and I think I could not employ it better than in dispelling or correcting some of the manifold illusions which have come to be. associated with angling and anglers. And I feel that I could not begin more appropriately than by discussing that grossly misleading statement which is to be found in the very first chapter of Walton’s "Compleat Angler." There the reader will find these lines: ". .. for you are to note that we Anglers all love one another." In the light of what precedes, it seems scarcely necessary for me to demonstrate their falsity. Though outwardly the Fraternity may preserve a United Front to such common enemies as the Philistine who throws stones in the best fishing pools, simply for the pleasure of seeing the splash, or the flannelled fools who pull in their incarnadined caravans hard by the reaches where the big fish lie and forthwith pollute the waters with their vile bodies, their attitude to one another is that of a perpetual nonbelligerency. The Truth About Gaffem But, you may well ask, what about your gallant friend, Col. Gaffem (Ret’d.), is he not a friend? And there I must confess in all honesty (and though an angler, I am reasonably honest when honesty is a paying policy) that Gaffem is not a friend of mine. Nor am I one of his. He is older and, if anything, more unathletic than I and (in ur ear) I contemn and despise him because of that. Those who catch fewer fish and tell poorer stories than I can catch or fabricate I despise, those who excel me I detest though their excelling be but by an inch or an ounce, or by a single additional pair of credulous ears. I am also aware that Gaffem thinks the same | of me, Forgetting the many occasions on

which I have surpassed him, he remembers only that day last year when his five fish exceeded mine by 114 ozs. and, believing himself the better angler, he has grappled that thought to his soul with hooks of steel. In his heart, I know, he despises me, but since union is the buckler of the weak, we generally fish together in an atmosphere of armed neutrality. And I can afford to allow him his illusions. Batecan, on the other hand, is an adversary of a different calibre as you can appreciate when you recollect that his.cunning treachery in the Magistrate’s Court on Monday last has put two of his rivals in a place of \safety during four of the best weeks in the season. Though I should perhaps say "usually the best weeks." There is no saying what the weather may bring forth, and judging by Gaffem’s efforts since we were put in here, if there is any power in prayer at all Batecan is already drowned, and sleet and tempest will make all angling impossible until we get out. Walton Was Wrong Perhaps what I have written is sufficient to convince my readers that Walton was wrong in talking of angling as if it were a friendly society like the Ku Klux Klan, Elks or Knights of Columbus. I could indefinitely multiply my illustrations to the contrary. I could describe for example, the rage of Batecan last Easter when he found Gaffem and me fishing that stretch of the Tongariro which he had previously informed us was the worst on the entire river. I could . . but I fear that I will not be able to go further now. The warder (who is quite a decent fellow and who would make quite a passable ghillie) has just advised-us that there are some more mailbags requiring sewing. Not an altogether unprofitable occupation for Gaffem at least, who has managed to secrete sufficient canvas about his capacious person to make a sizeable fishing tent or a pair of new waders for next season. Hope, if I may coin a phrase, springs eternal in the angler’s breast.