Game Fish Diaries with Chic McSherryGame Fish Diaries - Chic McSherry

 

 

  
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I wish that I could relate a tale of spending many a happy childhood day on riverbank or lochside with my dad, learning how to fish. Or, even more quirkily, with some cranky old black-sheep uncle who was only tolerated because he sometimes filled the fridge with fresh meat.

But I can’t. My dad worked pretty much seven days a week and two nights overtime all through my childhood and into my teens and no one else that was in my family fished at all. Back then, I thought my old man wasted the meagre amount of time he did get off in the local pubs and betting shops. That view persisted even into my twenties and thirties when I should have known better. But maturity has come to me at long last and I realise now that the guy worked harder than most to give me and my brother and sister everything he didn’t have. The kind of start in life that I really should have appreciated much more than I did. Therefore I now believe that he earned the right to do whatever the hell he wanted with his time off, even if it didn’t meet with my outrageously high expectations of what a parent should be at that time. Sorry dad.

So I learned to fish as a bit of a black sheep myself. It was the same with music; I learned to be a more than passable rock guitar player once upon a time, and there was not another soul even in the extended clan who played guitar. Maybe I was a chimera.

I can still remember my first ever fishing trip, though. I was about, oh, seven or eight I think and a rumour had spread like wildfire that there were perch and even pike in the local pond. This pond was really a hollow in an old coal tip that had partially filled with shallow water and some local guys had put some fish into it, as often happens when an empty body of water exists. It’s a sin against nature to have fishless water after all. Anyway, my friend Roy McGowan and I went down armed with a bamboo cane, some string attached to the end, a small thread bobbin for a float and a bent safety pin with a worm impaled on it. Huckleberry Finn, eat your heart out.
The place was heaving with people; shoulder to shoulder with all manner of tackle – some home made like ours and others store-bought. Every so often, someone would catch a small perch to keep the excitement and interest going and one guy even caught a small jack-pike.

I, of course, caught nothing whatsoever.

But I badgered and cajoled my dad and eventually he procured an old fibreglass rod from a pal in the pub and a fixed spool reel for me “to borrow”. It was never returned, eventually and unbelievably being converted into my first fly-rod and reel. Probably it was loaned on the full expectation that would be the last the unknown owner would see of it. I tried really hard with that rig in that little local pond for ages.

I still caught nothing, but fishing had definitely caught me.

And that’s kinda how I hope that it will catch my own kids. Ever since they were born, I have been determined that they will not grow up believing that food comes in shrink-wrapped plastic packs from supermarkets. I don’t necessarily want them to develop a taste for raw meat you understand, but I have always felt that if you kill an animal or fish, gut it, skin or otherwise clean it and then eat it, you gain a respect for the meat that you simply cannot find in freezer food. You also eat less of it, and that, in these days of excess, is important.

I can no longer sit quiet when I hear people droning on about their perception of animal welfare and cruelty and how “Man is the only animal that kills for fun”. What about cats? Have they never seen them kill just for the hell of it? Let’s go even bigger and into the more Disney-friendly creatures- what about dolphins and orcas. Lots of scientific studies have now been carried out on these cetaceans proving that they have a lot of “fun” whilst killing their food. Sometimes they kill without even eating the prey – isn’t that killing for fun alone? And as for animal welfare, I think that everyone should visit an abattoir at least once in their lives and see what goes on with our so-called humanely-killed food. Or stand on a trawler deck and watch tons of fish gasping their lives out, clearly in agony.

On the farm where I live, the cows are kept indoors in sheds for seven months of the year because of the bad weather here in Scotland. By the end of the period, they are standing in three or more feet of stinking faeces and urine, and the farmer genuinely thinks that they are well cared for. If I were to keep a dog in those conditions, the RSPCA would lock me up and throw away the key. But then, we don’t eat dogs, do we?

Even vegetarians or organic food nuts aren’t exempt. The tons of greenhouse gasses poured into the skies flying organic supermarket food all around the world more than outweighs the perceived environmental benefit of eating the stuff.

Face it; if you drive a car, wear clothes or just live in the modern world you contribute to mass, indiscriminate slaughter. The pollution we all create, every day, both directly and indirectly as a result of the manufacturing processes “necessary” to keep us in the manner we have become accustomed to, causes mass devastation in soil, rivers, lakes, oceans and atmosphere alike. Just because we can’t see it, doesn’t mean that it isn’t happening or that we can be absolved from responsibility. There is good evidence to prove that the amount of engine oil dripping onto US roads each year from vehicles is almost equivalent to one Exxon Valdez. It has to go someplace and the rivers are the obvious destination. Most rivers lead to the sea.

I suppose that we could all go back to being cave-dwellers. But then again, we’d all have to be pretty good hunters to survive that particular test. No catch and release there.

I’m not immune to the arguments of so-called conservationists, but I don’t like single issue politics and I like even less the anthropomorphism of wild creatures into cuddly-wuddly-fluffy-wuffy-toons that have huge eyes and love their parents and always do THE RIGHT THING and can talk to each other in baby American accents.

 

Me and Jamie when he was 1 year old

 

In the Florida Sunset

 

Jamie after his first sailfish

 

Kids

 

Scotty with a nice roosterfish in Panama

Big pargo!

Well done that man

 

 
 
 

And, yes, many people DO have fun, take pleasure and generally get off on fishing and hunting. It’s not a singular pleasure in the death of the animal or fish of itself that does it; it’s the whole experience end-to-end that gives the pleasure. It’s not possible to explain it properly; you either get that or you don’t. And it’s certainly not PC to admit to enjoying it because of the association with pain and “innocent” creatures. But I admit it – I enjoy what I do and occasionally some animal, bird or fish will die because of the pursuit of my enjoyment. That creature will be eaten and relished and respected; and that, for now, has to be good enough for me. Do I enjoy it as much if I don’t catch anything? No, I don’t. Do I enjoy it as much if I do catch something and it gets away or I let it go? Absolutely, because for at least a little while I was connected to something wild and, in some way, that in turn connected to something wild within me that can’t be satisfied by bird-watching or hill-walking or canoeing or, god forbid, golf.

On the 13th of February, 2002 after only just over a year in existence, the Scottish Parliament passed a law which outlawed the hunting of foxes with dogs and mounted riders. Much of the motivation for this Bill was, indisputably, class-driven. The predominately Labour parliament just couldn’t stomach the thought of red-coated Tory toffs riding to hounds and enjoying themselves by killing foxes. What is it they say – “The unspeakable in pursuit of the inedible”? Something like that.

You’d have thought that these lifelong adherents to the Socialist cause would have been a wee bit more concerned with the welfare of their fellow Scots; the acknowledged poor-men of Europe, both in terms of wealth and in health. But clearly the humble fox merited more attention than the crumbling state of the social welfare system.

Personally, chasing a fox with a pack of hounds holds no attractions for me either. However, when you really listened to the underlying language used by those opposed to the hunt, you have to be at least a little concerned for other blood sports. And make no mistake - fishing is a blood sport. Fish do bleed.

There was a great deal of emotive talk during the debate about “the taking of pleasure in another creature’s pain” and “the object of the so-called sport is the death of another creature”. How, then, when language like that is the gauge of acceptability, are we to separate shooting or fishing or any of what are euphemistically known as “country-pursuits” from fox-hunting? The doom-mongers have had a field day since, declaring “Fishing is next”.

I don’t necessarily subscribe to that, after all we didn’t stop fishing when badger-baiting and cock-fighting were abolished. However I certainly couldn’t successfully defend angling against that kind of language. But then, why should I? Many people fall into the trap set for them by the antis- they try to rationalise and reason with them by saying stuff like fish don’t feel pain and other such rot. They treat the anti-fishing lot like intelligent adults. That’s a big mistake.

Me – I just hold up their own hypocrisy to them and let them deal with that. There is not a human being on the planet that does not contribute, actively or passively, to the death of fish, birds and animals. Perhaps they should ban cars; by the numbers of dead foxes I see along our roadsides it would seem that cars are responsible for the death of more foxes than anything else.

Where does the so-called logic stop? Each day in the UK, 2 million chickens are slaughtered for food. Anyone who believes that each and every one of these birds has been humanely “put to sleep” before being butchered must also believe in tooth fairies and pink elephants. The process is almost entirely mechanised now and, as everyone knows, machines do break down from time to time. So, given that a certain percentage dies a fairly grisly death, despite the law and the slaughterman’s best intent, what percentage becomes acceptable? Is it 1%, 10%…what? I guess what makes it acceptable is that no-one actually enjoys the death of the chicken, not until it’s roasted at least. But then, I guess also that there are some slaughtermen out there who enjoy their jobs…and so it goes on.

The guy who was in charge of the NASA Space program once calculated that the entire project cost less than 1% of the annual global spend by women on cosmetics. He was using that statistic to justify the program, but I was just dumfounded by the numbers involved. That’s a lot of lipstick after all, and for every brand sold, there would be an LD50 test. Its full title is “Lethal Dose 50” and it consists of force feeding 100 rabbits with the cosmetic product until 50 of them die. Not pleasant. I don’t believe there is a woman on the planet who would take pleasure in that, but they all take pleasure in wearing the cosmetics. Even the cruelty free products rely heavily on ingredients that passed LD50s in the past. If we are going to have a debate on animal welfare and cruelty, pullease, drop the single issue politics and let’s get some real honesty in there.

I like to catch fish and I like to hunt with my hawks and falcons and if the government passed laws to stop me, then I’d move somewhere else. And I wouldn’t be on my own. It wouldn’t stop it; it would just push it someplace else. The same thing happened when they outlawed badger-baiting and cock-fighting - two proscribed “sports” which are alive and well here in Scotland to this day, albeit underground. And no, for the record, I endorse neither of these sports, nor those who support them, and would not defend their right to pursue their activity. Even I have lines that I don’t want to cross. I merely point out the facts of the matter.

Personally, I like to eat what I kill where possible. Someone once wrote that it was a throwback to the days when we were really hungry - that pleasure at catching something edible which meant the difference between eating and starving. I can’t vouch for that, but I like the sound of it if only because it helps to explain in some way the primal pleasure I get when I do catch something. I’m not happy about the creature’s pain or death, but I am happy that I have caught it nonetheless. So I somehow feel it necessary to harvest one every now and again, to remind myself of why it’s important for me to do this.

And I want that to be important to my kids too. I want it so much that I am prepared to do what I can to make sure that the wild places needed for this will actually exist when they grow up and that’s even more important. I don’t want the land or the rivers or the oceans fenced off like some great Conservation Area which excludes people; I want people to be a part of the living world. We are a product, after all, of evolution - like it or not. And we like to hunt – it’s in our genes, like it or not.

My friend Gerard has a small estate and he hunts it relentlessly. Absolutely relentlessly. And yet it is alive with wildlife because not only does he hunt it, he makes sure that it is managed with game and wildlife in mind. I see more song-birds and finches, as well as masses of game and even predators, on his land than there exists on any other equivalent land in the area, some of which is owned by so-called conservationists who frown on Gerard’s hunting proclivities.
That’s why it’s important to teach kids how to fish and hunt.

My boys have come with me since they were tiny – before they could walk I used to take them in kiddie back-packs. I can see already that neither of them have my passion for it, but they both like to come with me and they definitely like to catch a fish or two or see my hawks and falcons take game. Scott has become a very efficient spin-caster and can catch more than his fair share of rainbow trout. Both he and Jamie have had a dabble at fly-fishing from a boat and they have both caught their first fish on a fly-rod. They are developing a healthy interest in big game fishing too and I love that – although I cringe at the potential expense.

I would never dream of dragging them out with me when I go – they only come on their own terms. But I have to say that when I see them there standing beside me, a mixture of concentration and contentment on their faces whilst we all cast in our own ways to rising fish, life as a father just doesn’t get any better.

 

Chic McSherry
Cambus Farm
Scotland
August 2003