by Jeremy Wade
Back on the Rio Tocantins, I was looking at the current. As we headed upriver from the unproductive spots, I found a wedge-shaped eddy. What caused it was a slight projection from the bank, which created a diagonal furl in the flow, and an area of slack inside this. Elsewhere it would have been impossible to anchor any distance from the bank, but in the line of broken current we got the anchor to hold, and I swung out a short cast into the line of turbulence. I was reasoning that the fish, like the boat, would find it easier to hold position here; and because anything being carried by the current would naturally tend to settle here, I reckoned they would also be expecting food. Simple.
The analysis of the day is informative. Two hours plus in the wrong places for no fish. Twenty minutes in the right place for two fish. Says it all.
8
Bad Vibrations
According to Japanese mythology, the earthquakes that devastate parts of the country at seemingly random intervals are the work of a creature known as the namazu. It lives deep underground, guarded by the thunder-god Kashima, who restrains it by means of a heavy rock placed on its head. But from time to time, over the centuries, the guardian’s attention wanders, allowing the monster to flex its body, with destructive effect. Ancient prints depict the namazu as a giant catfish.
Even in modern Japan, you will see graphics representing the namazu on official posters and signage relating to earthquakes. I had been looking at just such an image–a cartoon catfish face with blue skin, pink lips and extravagant whiskers–mere moments before the floor started to shake.
It was like nothing I’d experienced before. The floor shook from side to side and jackhammered up and down. I dived under the table as furniture fell into the space where I had been standing.
Outside the chaos of this room, all was calm. I was in an earthquake simulator–powered by complex hydraulics and complete with padded railings to stop me falling out of the open space at the front. The cupboards that fell were made of foam. After twenty seconds it stopped, and I carried on with my day. The setting had been for magnitude 7 on the Richter scale, equivalent to the quake that hit the city of Kobe in 1995, killing 6,000 people. But what is the catfish connection?
It started, as many things do, with fishermen’s tales. Catfish were seen to become more active in the period immediately before an earthquake, splashing around on the surface of ponds. In the absence of a better explanation, it’s easy to see how, following the normal chronology of cause and effect, this might have led to the notion that catfish somehow cause earthquakes. From the perspective of the twenty-first century, however, with our knowledge of geology and plate tectonics, the namazu legend is now seen as mere fancy. But earthquakes continue to threaten Japan, and the catfish connection has intrigued some scientists. To test the old fishermen’s observations, Professor Naoki Yada, at Kanagawa Institute of Technology, has set up a simple but very elegant experiment. This comprises just a fish tank, a light beam passing through the water, and a catfish. When I observed it, the catfish was doing what catfish are well known for doing for much of the time: resting on the bottom, doing nothing. But I could see that if it moved into midwater it would break the light beam, and this would register on the counter beside the tank. In a normal twenty-four-hour period, the professor told me, the number on the counter would reach somewhere around 9 or 10. But there would be some days when it might hit 60. And when a graph showing the pattern over time of activity and inactivity was superimposed on the timing of earth tremors, the results bore out the fishermen’s observations. On a significant number of occasions, a spike in catfish activity preceded an earth tremor recorded by a seismometer. It was not a perfect correlation, but good enough to be an early warning system of sorts.
So although they don’t cause earthquakes, catfish do appear to have an ability to predict them. What exactly they are picking up is not known. One hypothesis is that there are tiny shifts in electrical fields before a tremor, and catfish can sense these. Another possibility is that they are detecting extremely faint vibrations, beyond anything we can sense. For now there is no explanation. But for an angler the message is very clear. It is a reminder that fish senses are very different from ours. While we experience the world mostly through our eyes, through colors and shapes, they live in a world of vibrations, which they detect through the whole body–the lateral line organ down each flank, and, for catfish and the carp family, a swim bladder that doubles as an amplifier. As is well known, the main function of this internal air sac is to control the fish’s buoyancy, but it is also a resonating chamber, enclosed by a taut membrane that acts like the skin of a drum. Sound waves in the water make the air in the bladder compress and expand, causing this membrane to vibrate, and these vibrations are transmitted to the inner ear via the minute bones of the Weberian apparatus.
This extra dimension to the senses is hard for us to imagine, but imagine it we must if we are to hunt fish successfully. We need to keep in mind all the time that for a fish a vibration in the water is important information. Decoded by the brain, it may signify prey, or a possible mate. Or it may mean danger.
During the first year I was filming River Monsters, there were moments that I wince to recall now–but they may be the reason I was asked to come back and do another year, rather than sliding back into solo fishing oblivion. These were the moments when I had to forcefully impress on my poor equipment-laden entourage the vital importance of stealth:
‘What did I say about putting stuff down? If someone plonks a box down just once we might as well pack up for the day! We go to all this trouble to get here, but if we clomp around and drop things we’re wasting our time!’
This was while we were fishing for alligator gar in Texas, on a stretch of river where they were unusually spooky, probably because of the attentions of bow-fishermen. To underline my point, I once spent half an hour sitting quietly before casting, after arriving at the bank, which probably came across as rather petulant. But it was a point that needed to be made: rushing to start fishing counts for nothing, if the price of the time you’ve gained is a pool that’s empty of fish, or full of scared fish.
I’ve been told I go into a different mode when I’m fishing, and that’s partly a different way of walking. Because it’s something I do automatically, I have to stop and think to work out how it’s different. Instead of hitting the ground with my heel I gently lower it, by slightly bending my back leg, then I roll my sole into contact with the ground. It’s about using the knees as shock absorbers, so my head very slightly dips and rises, rather than the level forward movement of normal walking. But it’s not any specialized technique, which needs to be taught; it’s basically what we all do as kids when we’re creeping up on someone. And that’s exactly what I’m doing.
This becomes more obvious when it’s combined with a crouch, which is often the case. It’s my default way to approach any water–and sometimes, when I’m very close to the bank, it morphs into crawling on my belly. This precaution is based on my understanding of what fish can and can’t see above the surface, which is determined, in turn, by the behavior of light when it hits the air-water interface.
As we all know, the surface of water is not a simple window, like a window into a room. Sometimes, when fishing a clear stream, it may seem like it is, but the reality is more complicated. Light passing from water to air, or from air to water, doesn’t travel in a straight line. Unless it is hitting the interface at exactly 90 degrees, it bends. And some light doesn’t pass through at all; it reflects back.
When light hits the water’s surface from above at a shallow angle, most of it doesn’t penetrate the water at all but is reflected. If you look at a lake on a windless day, the surface in the distance will be like a mirror, reflecting the trees or whatever else is standing on the far bank. Only if you look at a closer part of the surface, at a steeper angle, will you see through. Something similar, but more dramatic, happens underwater. Any light that hits the underside of the surface at an angle shallower than 4
1 degrees will be reflected. What this means is that a fish (or a diver) in open water looking up sees a bright, circular window overhead (Snell’s window, after the seventeenth-century Dutch mathematician Willebrord Snell), surrounded by a mirror. But this mirror is reflecting the below-surface world, so instead of being bright it will appear as a dark surround–deep blue in the case of open ocean or browny tan in a sandy river. The diameter of Snell’s window is always just over twice (2.3 times) the fish’s depth. So if the fish is three feet below the surface the window will be roughly seven feet across. At double the depth, the diameter doubles to fourteen feet. This part of the fish’s overall field of view can thus be visualized as an inverted cone, which changes in size but never in shape: wherever the fish is in the water column the angle made between the edges of the window and its eye will be the same. The size of this angle is 97.2 degrees.
This is quite a narrow field of view, which would be nothing much to worry about for most angling situations–were it not for the fact that light rays bend, or refract. Refraction allows fish to see around the edges of the window. Above the surface the cone of vision opens out to 180 degrees. But that doesn’t mean fish can see everything. Compressing a 180-degree angle of view into 97 degrees gives a distorted image, especially around the edges, an effect like that of a fisheye lens. Think of those hotel-room peepholes. Not only that, the brightness of the image diminishes at the edges because in this zone most of the light hitting the water’s surface is reflected, and only a fraction penetrates.
What this means in practice is that if you keep low–in a wedge of space that makes, say, a 20-degree angle with the water–you will keep in this dark edge zone. As you get closer to the water, however, the harder it is to avoid encroaching into the fish’s window. This is the time to remember that, unlike us, fish are not primarily concerned with seeing detail. What they register are contrast and movement. So if you are silhouetted against the sky and moving across the horizon, that will get their attention. The thing I do to avoid becoming a silhouette is to keep looking behind me. Taking up position in front of a tree is just as effective a tactic as hiding behind something, as long as clothing doesn’t contrast too much with the background. Becoming a visible silhouette, however, is often unavoidable. In this case the important thing is to keep movements slow. If you appear slowly and become part of the landscape, this may not alarm the fish.
All these precautions are most important when the surface is smooth, the water clear, and conditions bright. Ripples and rain make it harder for fish to see what’s happening above the surface, particularly around the edges of Snell’s window, so we can relax a bit in bad weather. But bad angler-spotting conditions are also bad fish-spotting conditions, so it cuts both ways.
The best confirmation that I’ve done everything right is the sight of fish close to the bank, acting completely unconcerned. The important thing now is not to get over-excited and blow it. If, as is more likely, I can’t see any fish, that doesn’t mean I can now move around at will. If the water has a degree of clarity, a fish that’s out of sight down deep can easily see me if I become a careless moving silhouette. So it’s important to stay in stealth mode for the duration. Otherwise we never know how many fish we scared off or how many potential opportunities we spoiled.
Most experienced anglers know these things, but novice anglers are often so overwhelmed by all the details of equipment and technique that they forget to consider the simple, fundamental fact that fish are wild animals. Acknowledging that fact means setting stealth mode as the automatic default for every visit to the water. Sometimes there’s no doubt that it’s the thing that makes the difference between catching and not catching.
A few years ago I visited an old pond that used to belong to a monastery. It was exactly the kind of place that used to materialize in my mind when I read the bewitching Confessions of a Carp Fisher by ‘BB’ (Denys Watkins-Pitchford). At one end was a dam, now the home of many venerable trees, whose branches hung low over the water, creating a tunnel of perpetual shade. From here the pond tapered to form a classic long triangle, fringed by reeds and framed by steep banks. Slowly I approached a spot halfway down the lake. It was high summer and the bank was thick with shoulder-high nettles. Normally standing at the water’s edge is a guaranteed way of scaring off anything that might have been there, if heavy footfalls haven’t already done that. Maybe you’ll see a slight flexing of the surface as a deep-lying fish reacts to the intrusion into its window. (Because of refraction, it will appear to the fish that an angler standing on the bank is leaning out right over the water.) But thanks to this cover, I was able to stand mere inches from the water without significantly breaking the horizon. As long as I moved slowly, like a heron, I wouldn’t become visible.
Anglers talk a lot about features, or ‘structure’–places where the flat, even landscape of the riverbed or lakebed does something different–but a feature that is often overlooked is the margin, unless it’s to heave a long cast at it from a boat or from the opposite bank. Fish love margins. It’s where small creatures fall in. And when wind blows the surface layer, this is where it doubles around, creating turbulence that stirs up the bottom, uncovering potential snacks. If the drop-off is steep, this in itself is cover for a predatory fish: a prey fish swimming further out will see just dark against dark. But because they are so close to land, even predators will be wary here; they must be approached with extreme care. It’s worth taking that care, though. It won’t just bring more opportunities; the intensity of contacting a big fish is magnified by extreme proximity.
At Monastery Pool I was in no hurry, despite the slight, contradictory tremor in my hands. I reached into my pocket and flicked a couple of dozen half-inch dog biscuits onto the surface. After a few minutes I threaded my rod through the reeds and lowered my bait, a single dog biscuit glued to the bend of the hook, onto the water. To keep the lightweight bait in position, there was barely a foot of line between rod-tip and hook. My centerpin reel was set to rotate freely. To keep the bait floating naturally, with no line on the surface, and the rod not moving, required a special, energy-intensive kind of stillness.
I was in that zone of expectation. At some point there was a ripple and a free offering disappeared. Then another. The next thing was the pale circle of a carp’s lips, underneath my bait. Trying not to shake, I looked into the black porthole of its eye, but it kept coming. Then one of those jump-cut moments after which there was just line sliding down into the water. I gave a slight pause, increased the pressure of my thumb on the spool, flicked the ratchet lever, and the rod transformed into a living thing as the carp surged out into open water. For a few minutes the 8lb line sang as it cut zigzags in the surface, punctuated by a couple of bulges when I had to hold the fish from lilies and trailing branches. Gradually I edged along to a clear patch of margin and worked line back onto the reel. Then came the magic moment when the rod’s sinews relaxed, as I lifted the landing net. Inside was a perfectly scaled common carp the color of old gold, with the long body shape of an ancestral ‘wildie.’ At nearly two feet long I guessed its weight at seven pounds, by no means a monster by modern standards but a lovely fish for this water.
Such a fish from such a place would have been reward enough, but what made it extra special was the fact that I’d been hiding in plain sight, close enough to look into its eye and almost close enough to touch it. After an approach that had created no earth tremors, and scarcely disrupted the horizon, I had become part of the background. This was, moreover, an especially good example of a day that could have ended differently, if just one crucial factor had been ignored. In this case the alternative story is summarized in just four words:
No stealth no fish.
LAKE
9
Gear Up
Contrary to what some people might imagine, I really enjoy fishing with light gear. Normally when I travel I pack a tiny two-piece wand in my rod case, just six feet long, which I use with a miniature fixed-spool reel. On t
his occasion I was using a borrowed outfit, even more delicate than mine, rigged with 6lb line and a small jig.
I was in Canada, and I’d spent the last eleven days fishing for muskellunge (Esox masquinongy), the fabled ‘fish of ten thousand casts.’ As a bit of a diversion, the crew had been keeping a rough estimate of my casts, and they reckoned that by now it had gone well into five figures–but I still hadn’t got the fish I wanted. To say I was disconsolate was an understatement. We had run out of time, and the single semi-sizeable fish I had landed, a forty-two-incher, wouldn’t really make for a dramatic program. So that was it for muskie; today I was fishing for walleye (Sander vitreus), the North American relative of the European zander (S. lucioperca), to give my middling muskie something of a supporting cast at least.
The conditions were not very user-friendly: a stiff wind had raised quite a swell on the lake’s exposed surface, causing the boat to tip and drift much more than we would have liked. But I welcomed the increased chance of a fish, and the change of routine. And, to be honest, it would be a bit of a rest.
Unless you’re trolling lures behind a boat, fishing for muskie is very demanding physically. It’s a day of constant casting: searching multiple locations with different patterns at different depths. But that’s not all. Most retrieves are finished with a mini-workout for the lower back known as a ‘big circle.’ As the lure approaches the boat, the rod-tip is pushed under the water and, without any pause in the retrieve, it leads the lure on an elliptical path just a few feet under the surface for, on average, two or three rotations.
This maneuver is an improvement on the muskie angler’s signature (and self-explanatory) ‘figure-eight,’ but the principle is the same. Muskie have an odd propensity for following lures really closely–sometimes almost touching it with the tip of their snout. If this happens and you swing the lure out of the water at the end of the cast, you’ve lost your chance. But if you do a big circle, the fish may decide to pounce. It’s heart-in-the-mouth stuff, as you strain to see through the surface, while your rod arm is on a hair trigger. So it’s also highly demanding mentally: you’re waiting for one split second of opportunity, and when that comes you must respond correctly. It’s an extreme case of having to be in a state of constant readiness, so much so that your responses must be at the speed of a reflex. And you mustn’t switch off, not even for one second. Whenever it looked like my concentration might be drifting, my muskie mentor Don Pursch would mutter his signature words: