How to Think Like a Fish

by Jeremy Wade

But then (when answering those emails) I thought about it some more. And although I couldn’t make any specific suggestions about tackle and methods, for fish and places I knew nothing about, I found that I did have some things to say about another level of method. Not details of technique but general principles, which I’ve found to apply to pretty much any fishing situation. But then, again, I ran into problems. For each thing I started to examine, it was like trying to take a lure out of an untidy lure box, where the lure I was holding was hooked onto another one, which was attached to multiple others, which in turn were entangled with everything else around them. Then, as I contemplated this chaotic, spiky mass, I had a flash of insight. It occurred to me that I was looking at some kind of checklist–a mental program that is constantly going on in the background while I fish. But it was going to take more than a hopeful shake to separate the components.

  The immediate temptation was to put the lid back on the box, and to keep on doing what I do, without trying to analyze it too much. This can, after all, carry the risk of destroying what you examine. (If you’re ever losing at tennis, compliment your opponent by asking them to explain how they hit their backhand, then watch their technique fall apart.) But part of me was intrigued. Disentangling the process–the essence of how I catch fish, which I instinctively knew was a thing of surprising simplicity–was a challenge on a par with catching any of those fish. And if I succeeded, it would be a belated but fitting response to my many questioners–the shot in the arm, perhaps, that many of them want. As such, it might even result, here and there, for novices and old hands alike, in helping to turn a monster of the imagination into reality.

  This book is my attempt to display the contents of the box.

  3

  Art Meets Science

  When I left school I was all set to go to art college, but it fell through at the last minute. That’s why, a year later, I ended up studying for a zoology degree. This led to a brief career as a science teacher (I got out because my working day ended, on average, at 1.30 a.m.), but I have also, now and then, taught art classes. So I have my feet in what some people regard as two very different camps. But I don’t see it that way at all. Science and art aren’t mutually exclusive. The best science is creative, and great art has a deep logic, speaking a language that resonates with our innermost workings.

  There’s another common belief, sometimes manifesting as fear, which holds that analyzing something magical can only demystify it. But again, I don’t agree. You can throw as much science as you like at the question of where we came from, but the mystery of the natural world and the wider universe is limitless.

  And so it is with fishing. Fishing is defined by uncertainty. Even today it’s little wonder if some people quietly believe that catching a big fish is a matter of waiting for the planets to come into special alignment. Or suspect, maybe, that the person who charms a monster must have made a pact with the devil. As with the wider universe, however, a scientific approach brings understanding. But we need have no fear that science will demystify it, and take away its soul, because no amount of analysis will ever get to the bottom of it. For this reason I have no worries about trying to get analytical about my fishing. Far from spoiling my time by the water, I believe this can only enrich it.

  In fact, the kind of fishing I do has forced me to get analytical. This is because some of the places I go to have never been fished with a rod and line–there’s no tried and trusted method to fall back on. I’ve had to go right back to first principles. To do that, I’ve had to think about what those principles are. And what I have come to understand is this:

  Looked at in a certain way, catching a big fish is very simple. All you have to do is put the right bait in the right place at the right time. You could even express this as a formula: B + P + T = F. Of course there are many different possibilities for each of these three elements, and the number of ways you can put these multiple possibilities together is astronomical, but there is something about seeing the problem in these terms that makes it less daunting. When the big, overwhelming thing is broken into smaller elements, the mind can get to work.

  But this is only the first part of the process: it only brings us to the moment when the fish takes the bait. The opportunity must now be converted into a result. Doing that successfully also depends on a number of things, which can again be listed. This time it’s a longer list, much of it about the right gear, but each thing is more clear cut and more manageable. There’s less excuse for getting it wrong. In fact I’d go further, and say there’s no excuse for losing a fish at this point, if that is through human error. If an angler has really thought about this second part of the process in full, then the likelihood of getting the fish in, once it has taken the bait, should be very high. But if just one component of this second part has been neglected, then the far harder achievement of tempting the fish to the bait could all be for nothing.

  So there’s a hard part and an easy part–or a relatively easy part. Tempting and landing. To catch big fish intentionally, rather than by happy accident, every component of each part needs to be addressed. That still gives us a lot to think about, but the problem now starts to have a shape. It’s something we can work on: a mental framework, or a checklist, or a formula, however you choose to visualize it. What was once a problem of such magnitude that it threatened to paralyze our thought processes can now be addressed with a clear head.

  Recently I was locked in a small room with four other people and we had an hour to get out. This wasn’t as traumatic as it at first sounds–it was one of those games for corporate team-building–but there’s still something about being in a confined space with a clock ticking that concentrates the mind. Inside the room were a number of locked boxes, a locked cupboard, a selection of other objects and a second locked door, which we assumed was the way out. Most of the locks were combination padlocks, but there was also a dial lock, a keypad, and others that were more arcane. Clearly we needed to get opening those locks–but how? The simplest locks had three rotating barrels, so we were looking for one correct combination out of 1,000 possibilities (000 to 999). I used to be able to open bike combination locks by feel, but modern locks are more robust, plus I’m out of practice since I left school. So forget that. Another possible strategy was to work through all the options for each lock (000, 001, 002…) but even at the rattling rate of one combination per second that’s potentially fifteen minutes for just the simplest lock. It was beyond obvious that this would never get us out in time. The other possible strategy was to investigate our environment for clues. Picking up a statue on a shelf, we found a key underneath it. This opened one of the boxes, which contained a document, on which were some numbers… After half an hour of shouting and sweating, we had several of the locks open and were well on our way to escaping. Then we discovered that the second door just led to another room, containing yet more locked boxes.

  Did we get out in time? Not quite. We failed by eight seconds. But if we’d been working our way through random combinations for each lock, rather than looking around us and thinking things through, we’d still be there now. Yet this unthinking approach, of proceeding mechanically without looking for clues, as if there were all the time in the world, is common in fishing. And it can seem to make sense, because once in a while, as with playing the lottery, somebody somewhere, out of all the countless participants, gets the result they hoped for. But for most that result never comes.

  To do better than this, to fish with a realistic expectation of catching a big fish, it is necessary to gather information and feed this into the decision-making process. The more information, and the more intelligently this is handled, the greater the chance of success. Ideally every single aspect of how you fish should be considered: not just choice of tackle and method, choice of bait, and choice of where to present the bait, but also a number of less obvious items that are not normally considered at all, and deeper layers of detail. Some of these other things can be crucial, the difference between su
ccess and failure. So nothing should be left at a default setting, unless there is good reason.

  But all this takes energy. In practice it’s much easier to fish with a large chunk of what we do on a lazy ‘auto’ setting. To do better, we first have to recognize that by following such an approach we’re settling for less than optimum results. Then, to make the shift from there, to fishing in a way that is truly effective, we have to really want that big fish. But what does that even mean? How do we do that? Personally, I try to fish as if my life depended on it.

  I know this sounds rather extreme, a bit airport-book-motivational, for a pastime that’s supposed to be a rest from the hamster wheel, but bear with me. In the escape room there was a sense of urgency. Even though it wasn’t a real life-or-death situation, the adrenaline was flowing almost as if it was. And the effect of adrenaline is to boost the supply of fuel, in the form of dissolved glucose, to the muscles and brain. It awakened memories of the kind of nerves I used to get in exams, bordering on panic. But panic is a sign of failure to deal with a crisis. It’s precious energy being squandered on pointless activity. And if you don’t channel some of that energy into mental processing of the situation, you’re done for.

  I once got lost in the Amazon jungle, with no compass, no GPS, no food and no water. At the time, I was based in an isolated hut a long way from the river, a simple raised platform with no walls and a palm-thatch roof, next to a hole in the ground that served as both bath and drinking water supply. Contrary to most jungle-explorer mythology, the people scattered along the riverbanks weren’t all drug traffickers trying to kill me. I’d spent a lot of time learning some Portuguese before I came here, so I was able to decode their menacing-sounding mutterings, complete with waving machetes, as offers of freshly sliced watermelon. And, if I wanted it, a place to sling my hammock. José was introduced to me as a fisherman, but mostly he cultivated a clearing near his hut, on the edge of a hump of slightly raised ground. In the wet season this higher ground became an island and he could paddle all the way here, through the treetops, from the river. Now it was an hour-long assault course, balancing across log bridges, crossing a small lake by canoe, and wading through thigh-deep mud.

  I paid rent in the form of occasional weeding and portering plus the odd fish or two from the small lake, to save José having to go there with his tattered gill nets. This gave him more opportunity to do what he enjoyed most, which was walking in the forest with his dogs and shotgun. Among the river folk, who mostly kept in sight of water, José was something of a legend. He would carry just three or four cartridges, and normally came back with the same number. But if there was a shot, he would be back with a paca, a curassow, or maybe a wild pig. Early in my stay, we dug out and killed an agouti from inside a hollow fallen tree. At the time this drawn-out and visible death made me sick to my stomach, but it was interesting, over the following weeks, how a monotonous and patchy diet dialed down my scruples.

  On the day in question I was trying to get to a lake that I wanted to check out. José had given me directions, which at first made sense: follow the edge of the high ground, then just keep going. But very quickly the vegetation closed in and the way ahead became much more uncertain. The ground was now undulating in all directions and cleft by the beds of winding, dried-up creeks. I kept going for more than an hour as best I could, by which time I should have been at the lake. But I was not José, and by now I had no idea where I was. In role-reversal terms, it was like me telling him to borrow my car and drive up the motorway to London.

  It was as I resolved to turn back that the full enormity of my situation sank in. My target now was not a lake a couple of miles long, but a single hut under the trees. Even if I’d known where I was and which way to go, just a degree or two out would have seen me missing my target and going past it–at which point there were a hundred miles of uninhabited forest before the Rio Madeira. It was even possible that I was on the wrong side of the hut right now. In fact, wherever I was, there was a whole 180-degree arc–basically any direction with an easterly component–that would take me into this zone. So I had a serious problem. Solving it was going to take some serious mental application, all the science and creativity I could muster.

  The obvious answer was to head west, towards the river. Once there, I could look for José’s moored boat, then pick up the path to the hut. If I didn’t find it, I could follow the bank upstream, where there were some riverside huts that I might reach the next day. Downstream I had no idea how far it was to the nearest habitation. Or, if I was lucky, there might be a passing boat. But… I had no compass, and beneath the forest canopy I couldn’t see the sun. How could I find out which way was west?

  Often when things go wrong, my reaction is to swear a lot. Occasionally this has been filmed. Once the editor had to use the bleeping machine thirty-three times in the space of two minutes, but that was exceptional. On this occasion I didn’t swear. I seemed to know instinctively that I would be expending energy that I couldn’t afford to waste. Instead I sucked some water from a muddy puddle, to replace the sweat that was soaking my shirt, and stuck my machete into an old, rotten tree trunk. Standing vertically, it cast multiple faint shadows, radiating like the spokes of a wheel, thanks to scattered small gaps in the canopy. But one shadow was marginally darker than the rest. This, I reasoned, must be pointing away from the sun–so either east or west, since I was pretty much on the equator. Which of the two it was depended on whether it was before or after midday. But I didn’t have a watch…

  I remembered sundials, and the fact that shadows are also clocks. So I marked the shadow’s position and settled down to wait. Half an hour later the shadow had clearly lengthened, so it was after midday and the shadow was pointing east. As long as no clouds came over, I had a working compass.

  I set off to the west, and little by little the trees became less dense and my horizons extended. After an hour the land started falling away to the north and I could somehow sense water. I decided to make a quick detour to investigate, and this brought me to a small lake. It was a worrying discovery, because I’d heard of no other lakes anywhere near where I was trying to go. Once there, however, I thought I saw more water in the distance, a certain brightness showing through the trees. Confident now of my navigation, but hearing distant thunder, I hurried in that direction. And as I reached the bank I saw the big island ahead of me; this was Lago Grande, the lake I’d been trying to find. I knew where I was.

  Sighting on the furthest tree trunk I could see, I now set off quickly south, knowing that this course would bring me either to José’s small lake or the path from the river. After maybe an hour of navigating this way, taking repeated bearings in brighter patches of forest, and always deviating to the west if there was any difficult terrain, I came out smack in the middle of the lake’s northern shoreline. After traversing the lake’s boggy inlet, there was just enough light to follow the path, which in that place is just a slight flattening of fallen leaves. I arrived at the hut just before nightfall.

  José laughed when I told him my story. ‘If you hadn’t come back, I’d have gone out and found you,’ he said.

  Later, over boiled fish and gritty manioc, he told me about two locals who had got lost in the same area the year before. He mentioned, as if this was significant, that they’d had a shotgun with them, along with two cartridges, some matches, and the meat from a pig they had shot.

  ‘How long did it take them to get out?’ I asked.

  Through a mouthful of fish bones he said, ‘Twenty-two days.’

  The experience taught me two important lessons. Number one: next time take a compass. Number two: adrenaline is a powerful mind-expanding drug. Not only that, it’s legal and it’s free. And while constant over-secretion is bad news for your health if you’re a harassed worker in a sedentary job, injecting a little into our fishing could help to improve results. This won’t be news to subsistence fishermen, for whom the price of failure is going hungry. But an adrenaline-fueled recreationa
l fisherman sounds like a contradiction in terms–until you think about it. That raised heartbeat, the feeling of excitement at the waterside, is a sign that the adrenaline is flowing. The thing now is to use it. Whenever I fish, I want to apply that same degree of attention and thought that got me out of the jungle.

  And the magical thing about fishing is that we feel the effects of adrenaline beside the humblest pond or stretch of canal. Even here we can learn to access those deeper layers of our potential, which we may never reach in other areas of our lives. It’s heady stuff, and it’s why we do it.

  And when we turn our expanded attention to the challenge of catching a big fish, we can take heart from the knowledge that (as in the escape room and the Amazon forest) the hoped-for result is possible. If your target species is catchable on rod and line, then no individual specimen is uncatchable, given the right approach.

  But I’m starting to get ahead of myself. When it comes to trying for a big fish, we should first make sure, as far as we can, that we are fishing in the right place.

  4

  The Importance of Being a Detective

  When I first got into carp fishing, in my mid-teens, I spent a lot of time not catching carp. Days and nights with my eyes aching, staring at that piece of silver paper hanging on the line above the reel, willing it to move. And it scarcely ever did.

  This was the 1970s, when carp in England were creatures of mythology, only rarely materializing in the corporeal world. People clocked up hundreds, even thousands, of hours by the water without getting even a touch. Such spectacular failure was almost something to be bragged about, a sign of true devotion. It set us apart from those who fished for lesser species, who didn’t have the physical and mental stamina to go after the near-uncatchable carp.