How to Think Like a Fish

by Jeremy Wade

  ‘When you least expect it…’

  Technique must also be flawless. The big circle is an improvement on the figure-eight because a big muskie can’t turn as tightly as a smaller one–if the lure turns too sharply there’s a risk that the fish can’t keep locked on. But for such a theoretically simple technique there are vital details of execution–a lesson I learned the hard way. On my second day a fish came charging after my lure out of a weedy bay, but as the lure approached the boat its great broad head sank from sight. As I worked out later, this wasn’t just bad luck; it was because I didn’t yet have the technique completely nailed. I hadn’t pushed the rod into the water soon enough, and I hadn’t pushed it far enough down. So instead of the lure continuing at the same depth, it had angled up, putting the fish on collision course with the boat. That fish has become one of those missed monsters that floats into my head from time to time, one of those recollections that makes me involuntarily screw up my eyes, trying to erase the memory of its loss.

  In the remainder of my time there were a handful of other follows, but nothing that looked so purposeful. And nothing took, even when I did everything right. My compensatory fish took in a more conventional way, hitting a spinnerbait early in the retrieve. And that was it. I can remember few times when I’ve fished so hard for so little return.

  The drill for walleye was relaxing in comparison: lower the weighted jig-hook, baited with a dead minnow, until I felt it bump the bottom, then bring it up a fraction and gently twitch it up and down. With the movement of the boat and the lightness of the jig, plus the wind blowing a bow into my line, it took a couple of casts to tune my senses. But quickly I reached the point where I could feel the bump with my fingertip on the line and read the visual information carried in the curvature of the line. (When the jig hit bottom, the curvature increased.) Just knowing that the jig was working correctly, in the right zone, despite the conditions, brought a small glow of satisfaction that was independent of the prospect of any fish.

  Then, as I twitched and drifted, my fingertip registered something new. A bite! But the faint throb that answered my strike was there for the merest flicker of time, and I was left wondering if maybe I’d imagined it.

  I lowered the jig again, and a few minutes later my arm reacted to another pluck. This time there was no doubt. As I raised the fish from the bottom I could feel a decent weight, which increased as the rod doubled over. Then the weight pulled back, and started running. The spool on my little reel was now spinning, each turn telling me something with increasing insistency–something that was confirmed when the fish showed itself twenty yards away, clearing the surface in a tail-slapping somersault. It was a huge muskie.

  The footage of this shows me staying remarkably calm. This is because I had no expectation of landing it. On the soundtrack I’m actually heard to say this, in a matter-of-fact way. That it was still attached after crashing back into the water was a miracle, but this did nothing to give me any confidence. It felt more like a taunt. True, my reflex lowering of the rod had probably helped, to ease up on the tension but not to the point where the line fell slack. But now it was just a question of how long it would be before the line (nylon monofilament the diameter of fine cotton, with no wire anywhere) would touch a tooth, a rock, or the edge of the muskie’s gill plate. Any one of these would have the effect of a knife.

  But in the meantime we had a spectacle. The little rod hooped over as the fish revealed itself next to the boat, then sounded. Then another moment of improbability, as it came back to the surface. In disbelief I realized it was nearly close enough to net, but a careless swipe would be disastrous. I held my breath as the net was gently lowered beside me, and then–a hallucination surely–the fish was inside. We had it!

  The first thing I did was look for the hook. It was nicked through the skin at the trailing edge of the maxilla–the elongated, semi-detached piece of bone than runs along the edge of the muskie’s upper jaw. The chances of it lodging in such a safe place were infinitesimal–but even here, a sideswipe of the head with an open mouth would have brought a very different ending.

  Just nudging the magic fifty-inch mark, it was one of the most remarkable captures of my life. And it’s one that has part of me wanting to point out what can be achieved with a cool head and careful mastery of light gear. But that would be massively underplaying the part played by luck. So it hasn’t made me a light-tackle evangelist. If anything, in fact, it underlined the importance of matching tackle to quarry. For heavy fish you need heavy gear.

  My idea of what constitutes heavy gear has undergone an interesting progression over the years. I remember stepping up from 3lb line to 7lb when I started long-trotting for chub between the reed beds of the Suffolk Stour. Then there was the move from 8lb to 12lb when I began going for bigger carp in more confined spaces–and even to 15lb when I needed to extract them from the reeds.

  When I went after mahseer in South India, I was advised to spool up with 22lb line. But despite landing a very big fish on this, I soon found that it was pushing my luck in fast, rocky water. By chance I managed to get hold of some 42lb nylon, which turned out to be perfect–both strong and robust–and this became something of a plateau for a while. When I went to Africa, my first goliath tigerfish was brought in on 40lb line.

  Then I went to Brazil after arapaima, which meant a chance of hooking something twice, or three times, or maybe even four times the size of the biggest mahseer or goliath tigerfish. By that time braid was available, but mostly in lighter breaking strains. The strongest I could find anywhere was 80lb, so I jumped to using that. As well as accounting for several arapaima, this also brought in a ten-foot black caiman that picked up a deadbait. Even so, I later moved up to 150lb braid for some fishing (yet another doubling of the number, more or less), and this, for now, is as heavy as I go. Although, come to think of it, there was one occasion when I geared up with 200lb mono on a massive Penn multiplier.

  This was when I went after bull sharks in Indian River Lagoon, in Florida. Although we took the bait out by kayak, this was fishing from the shore, at pretty long range. In these circumstances there’s little you can do if a big fish on the line decides to ‘kite’ left and right. Even without taking anything off the reel it can sweep the line through an angle of almost 180 degrees, which runs the risk, in this place, of taking it around some big concrete blocks in the water. It was this combination of factors that dictated the use of such heavy nylon line. As it turned out, the bull shark I caught wasn’t massive, a six-foot juvenile that had likely spent the previous five or six years in Florida’s inland waterways, including in fresh water. But the heavy line was needed for two other fish I caught, a couple of goliath grouper (Epinephelus itajara) both bigger than me. The bigger one was seven feet long and would have weighed around 375 pounds.

  Some people may raise their eyebrows at the mention of such heavy gear. Surely, they think, such over-the-top tackle is not really necessary. Well, that depends. In my case, I am not after the general run of fish. And I’m not just gearing up for big fish. I’m gearing up for the biggest fish that I might possibly encounter. And while I admit that such gear might indeed be overkill for lesser specimens, I make no apology for this. I am normally after just one fish, and the aim is to get it in. I don’t want to hook it and lose it. My intention is to see it up close and show it to the camera. Any consideration of ‘sport’ is, for me, of secondary importance.

  The idea of sport, in the context of fishing, is an interesting one to unpack. There’s a common misconception among non-anglers (and some novice anglers) that you need to use 5lb line to land a five-pound fish, 20lb line for a twenty-pound fish, and so on. But a fish in the water weighs nothing (with the exception of negatively buoyant fish such as sharks, rays, and some catfish). With most species you could support a motionless fish of any size on the slenderest of threads. But weight out of the water is the traditional way to measure and compare the size of fish, and so this is the measure that we continue to
adopt.

  But a fish’s ‘weightlessness’ doesn’t make weight a meaningless measure. It turns out that, from a scientific point of view, even neutrally buoyant fish are not weightless in water. When you lower a fish into the water its weight doesn’t disappear; it becomes supported by the water, which is in turn supported by whatever is supporting the water. So when you return a fish to the water, the downward force exerted by the water on the riverbed or lakebed becomes very slightly increased (in the same way that the weight of an aircraft becomes spread over a huge area of the earth’s surface once it is no longer supported by its landing gear). This somewhat head-numbing concept can be demonstrated by a simple experiment. If you were to put a tank of water on a set of scales and then add a fish to the water, the weight registered on the scales would increase by the weight of the fish. At this smaller scale the physics makes more sense. And of course if the fish added to the tank were hypothetically suspended from a spring balance, the weight registered by the balance would simultaneously reduce all the way to zero. This latter observation is not so academic. It underlines the fact that most fish cannot break even a light line using their weight alone.

  What breaks a fishing line is the force the fish exerts on the line when it swims–or when it jumps from the water and flexes its body, or falls on the line. All other things being equal, a big fish will of course exert more force than a small fish, because it has a bigger motor–in the form of more body and fin surface acting on the water, and more powerful muscles. But the numbers (fish weight versus necessary line strength) still won’t be a simple one-to-one match. In a straight pull with no run-up, line with a breaking strain of x pounds can possibly hold out against a fish that weighs 2x pounds, or maybe even 3x. (To an extent it depends on the species, and the individual fish.) But in most cases an angler will avoid a straight pull against a fresh fish, with a locked-down drag, so these ratios are no more than educated guesses.

  Whatever these numbers, though, they change significantly when something else comes into play: the angler’s skill in knowing when to slacken off tension and when to increase it. On occasion it’s possible to tire out and catch very big fish on what seems like improbably light line. A quick search on the internet reveals a 130-pound sailfish caught on 8lb line (a multiplication factor of 16), a 798-pound blue marlin on 30lb line (x23), and a 1,051-pound black marlin on 20lb line (x52). But open, snag-free water and a boat for chasing the fish are not the norm in fresh water. Nevertheless, the same general principle holds, and some impressive catches have been recorded. The US-based International Game Fish Association (IGFA) has ‘line-class’ records for a number of freshwater species.

  Such records are said to celebrate the angler’s skill, and that is certainly a factor. But they give no consideration to the part played by luck, the part of the equation that dare not speak its name. Some light-tackle captures are accidental, in the sense that the angler was targeting a smaller species when a bigger one took, but despite this handicap they managed to bring the fish in. My big muskie for example. Other times, though, the handicap is self-imposed. Instead of using gear that’s determined by a realistic consideration of what’s needed to land the fish, it’s chosen with reference to an arbitrary line category. Sometimes using light line is also justified as ‘giving the fish a chance,’ which on the face of it sounds like an honorable thing to do. But in practice it can mean a number of fish breaking the line. This, no matter how it’s dressed up, boils down to losing a fish through avoidable equipment failure, and in my book that should be unacceptable. With too-light gear there’s also the risk that any fish that doesn’t escape ends up being unnecessarily exhausted.

  All-tackle records (such as those administered by the IGFA and the British Record Fish Committee) are a different matter. These are interesting because they give a limited indication of how big a particular species grows. But I’m not sure what line-class records tell us. I can’t help but think that they are yet another dreary symptom of our modern obsession with measuring everything, and disregarding all those things that can’t be measured.

  For example, how do you give an indication of how lucky a capture was? To claim a line-class record, you have to supply comprehensive supporting information, which may include photographs, witness details, sample of leader, certification details of weighing scales, etc. How about also providing the number of fish that broke the line? With this information you could divide the weight of the fish by the total number of fish hooked, and that would in many ways give a more meaningful figure. While I’m in thought-experiment mode, I also like the idea of setting the calorific value of the fish against the calories expended in its capture (including the calorific value of all cash and equipment). I wonder how many of us, including record breakers–perhaps especially record breakers–would avoid coming up with an overall energy deficit.

  There’s one more thing to be said in the matter of light versus heavy tackle. Much is made of the superior skill required to catch a fish on light tackle, but this assumption doesn’t stand up to close scrutiny. While light tackle is a handicap in the matter of landing a big fish, it’s often far easier to tempt a fish on light tackle. And in truth this is probably the main reason why some anglers deliberately fish light, rather than any desire to bag a line-class record. But to this I still say: it is irresponsible to knowingly hook a fish that you have little chance of landing. (If there’s one exception to this, let me suggest it’s casting poppers for big yellowfin tuna off Ascension Island, in the mid-Atlantic, where you know they are going to get off because you’ve taken the hooks off. That’s what you do if you really want to give them a chance.)

  As I mentioned at the start of this, fishing with light gear is a joy. It co-operates with you. In contrast, try casting 80lb mono. Put it on a fixed-spool reel and it just won’t work. It will spring off at the slightest opportunity, its corkscrew kinks established for all time. Not just that: even the biggest fixed-spool you can find won’t hold the amount of line you need. So you need to put it on a multiplier. But a multiplier that holds a hundred yards of 80lb mono is not designed as a casting tool; it’s meant for trolling, or just lowering down to the bottom. So you have to learn how to cast a reel that’s not designed for casting, on a rod that’s not designed for casting. This was my general-purpose big-fish travel outfit for a number of years.

  The revolutionary thing that the invention of supple, low-diameter braided line has done is to make heavy tackle much more user-friendly. So there’s much less temptation now to fish over-light for big fish. But you can’t always get away with ditching nylon. If you want to catch big fish from rivers that contain rocks, without running the risk of losing that fish of a lifetime, then you need to know how to handle heavy mono.

  In short, I’m saying that you shouldn’t feel shame for using heavy gear. If that’s what you need to extract the biggest fish you are likely to encounter, then you should use it. If I hadn’t made this part of my approach, I would have lost a good proportion of the fish that I have caught. It comes down to whether or not you want the fish to have the last laugh.

  And although a lot of the fishing I do is off the end of the normal spectrum, the same question should always be asked whenever a line is cast: If I hook the biggest fish that could be in this water in front of me, would I feel confident that this gear I’m using would be up to the job of bringing it in?

  If the answer is No, you should scale up.

  10

  Have a Plan

  There’s no point hooking the fish of a lifetime if it becomes the one that got away. Losing a fish through human error is something to be avoided at all costs. As well as making sure your gear is up to the job and 100 percent sound, you should be physically and mentally prepared. This includes going through all the ‘what ifs’–all the things that might happen once a big fish is hooked–and having a fully thought-out plan for each eventuality. If you leave it until the fish is on the line, there may not be enough time or mental clarity to deal properly
with the situation. That’s when you find that trying to squeeze a ten-minute thought process into a couple of high-adrenaline seconds is a sure way to see all your time and effort come to nothing. So don’t overlook pre-cast planning; there are times when it can be truly pivotal. In fact, my whole River Monsters career very likely wouldn’t have happened if this weren’t a part of the process that I automatically address.

  In India in 2008, I almost didn’t make it to the river. From England I’d not been able to get detailed information about the weather in the Himalayan foothills, other than the fact that the monsoon rains were early and heavy. Just how heavy became apparent when I saw the queue of vehicles up ahead. The road had disappeared under a torrent of brown water, too deep for even the big trucks to get through. With nothing else to be done, I settled down to wait.

  A couple of hours later I became aware of an engine roaring and a commotion. One of the trucks was going for it. It slewed from side to side on the loose boulders under its wheels, and, aided by a collective holding of breath, staggered up onto dry land. One by one other vehicles took the plunge, until it was our turn. A few tense minutes later, against all earlier expectations, I was continuing my journey.