How to Think Like a Fish

by Jeremy Wade

  I arrived one evening in a feverish state of mind. It was high summer, and on the four-hour journey from the other side of the country my old Mini had been constantly on the verge of boiling over. The only way to keep it going had been to run it all the way with the heater on full blast. Maybe this was why I decided, after my customary few minutes of sitting and thinking, to try something different.

  Although there was always a fair amount of foot-clomping on the near bank–why be stealthy if your baits are nowhere near?–I reasoned that the fish might feel quite safe in the near margins, at least in the small, dark hours of the morning. This was because, I hypothesized, no fish ever got caught from here. And that was because nobody ever put a bait here. My chosen spot was opposite the end of a wooded peninsula that almost divided the lake into two, and my plan was to drop my freelined bait just short of this. I waited until nobody was watching and made a gentle under-arm swing.

  Besides my non-macho casting, there was another reason my cautious optimism was tinged with embarrassment. On my hook was something that no self-respecting carp angler had used for years: a boiled potato. But I had been thinking lately about the current fashion for high-protein baits–gourmet concoctions that would have made even the most pampered household pet green with envy–and, again, I wanted to try something different. This was not just for the sake of being perverse, but based on the principles of nutrition. While there was no doubt that the new HP baits were very successful, I was not sure it was all about protein content.

  ‘Protein good, carbohydrate bad’ is the boiled-down message of most food advertising, so that’s what most people believe. But our need for energy is much greater than our need for the raw materials for growth and repair. Having said that, most people in the developed world take in way more carbs than they need, without even trying. Just look at the labeling on processed food, if you’ve got a magnifying glass handy, and you will see sugar hidden everywhere, from chocolate to mayonnaise, breakfast cereals to baked beans. So humans are indeed well advised to cut down on their intake.

  But if you’re a wild animal, you’ll take all the carbs you can get. So much so that if you’re short, you’ll feed the precious amino acids that are yielded from the digestion of proteins into the energy-release pathway. For day-to-day survival, protein is a luxury, but carbohydrate is a necessity. So carp will be anything but carb-averse. Hence my choice of a potato, with a few loose offerings scattered around to get their attention–although I’d not gone the whole hog and done any kind of prebaiting.

  I also factored in a regard for a carp’s curiosity. I was offering something new, which had no negative associations.

  The darkness grew thicker, and the world became quiet. Lying on my bed-chair, I entered that state of vigilant relaxation where the stillness has the feel of a frozen moment. Just the occasional cough, or a hint of a murmur rolling across the water, betrayed the passage of time. Then, induced by just the right frequency of alert inattentiveness, came the low buzz from my bite alarm. Without being aware of exactly how I got there, I was standing at the water’s edge, holding a rod that was now connected to something alive. After a brief but intense tussle, in that grey territory where the outcome is ninety-odd parts determined by human competence and assiduousness, and the unknown remainder in the lap of the gods, a carp was in the landing net. I parted the meshes to reveal the net-like pattern of a fully scaled flank–the rare sight of a ‘common’ carp, a variety which in this lake and most others is now outnumbered by its partially scaled brethren. At nine pounds it wasn’t a big one, for this water where the hope was always for a fish over twenty, but on a night that was otherwise quiet it was ample in terms of satisfaction.

  This was the simple pleasure that comes from doing something new and different, and being rewarded with a result. This occasional deviation from the norm, rather than always sticking to an established repertoire, can be seen as a behavioral mutation: it’s something which might lead nowhere but which on the odd occasion might lead somewhere interesting or even revolutionary. It’s the way one evolves as an angler. But if you keep doing what you always do, you’ll keep getting what you always get.

  Probably the best example of an angling mutation that turned out to be revolutionary was the development of the hair rig in the late 1970s. Prior to this, who would have thought that fishing a bare hook, with the bait dangling underneath it, would be any use as a technique? Like many of the best inventions it was, on the face of it, counterintuitive. But once it existed, and its effectiveness had been demonstrated beyond any doubt, it made perfect sense.

  It came at a time when many carp anglers were trying to get an edge by focusing intensely on bait, place or time–or all three. The route to a big fish was perceived to be through expensive prebaiting campaigns, access to exclusive syndicate waters, and/or dizzying numbers of rod-hours. Also under the ‘place’ heading was fishing at extreme long range, putting baits in places that had been hitherto unexplored. What led to the hair rig was a slight shift of focus, to another vital part of the fish-tempting equation: presentation.

  Carp sometimes seemed to have an uncanny ability to tell hookbaits from loose offerings. There were stories of anglers going out in boats after a fishless session and finding their hookbaits untouched–but all the surrounding offerings gone. Initially it was thought that stiff monofilament poking out of the hookbait might be alerting the carp that this mouthful was different. Now we know that it’s all to do with the way that carp feed–sucking the bait in, rather than moving to engulf it human style–and the behavior of the bait when they do that. This understanding has led to the further development of the hair rig to the point where the bait is given just the right amount of buoyancy to counteract the weight of the hook–a so-called critically balanced bait. With this refinement the hookbait now behaves in almost exactly the same way as a loose offering, when sucked or wafted by a hungry but wary carp. As an added bonus, and again making sense with hindsight, a hair rig gives a better chance of a hook-set than a hook nicked in the bait.

  It also demonstrates that carp, at least, are less bothered by a hook that is supposedly visible than they are by a bait that behaves unnaturally. But many anglers, and otherwise knowledgeable fishermen I’ve met on my travels, persist in the assumption that a hook has to be buried in a bait. I’m often getting into discussions about this when I’m trying to hook a bait my way without hurting anybody’s feelings. The only fish I’ve come across that seem to see hooks and be wary of them are goliath tigerfish, which sometimes take a precision bite out of a bait in the exact place where there are no hooks. But this is based on a very small sample size. Meanwhile in the Amazon, pink dolphins will clearly ‘see’ and avoid a hook even in muddy water, using their sonar, which is just as well because nobody should want to hook one of these 300-pound beasts. But if you cast in a dead fish with the hook just nicked into the lip, be prepared for a dolphin to grab the bait clear of the hook. The first time this happened to me I thought I’d lost the biggest catfish in the river. My boatman was laughing, and told me to look at the water. A few seconds later, the surface bulged and there was a loud puff of air. The sound seemed to carry a hint of mockery.

  So much for the hair rig, other than to say that I had a nodding acquaintance with the man whose brainchild it reportedly was, the late Lenny Middleton, who I bumped into from time to time on a couple of waters. Most experiments, of course, don’t have such revolutionary results. In fact most experiments don’t lead anywhere at all. But a non-result is still a result. It yields information, which feeds into our evolving understanding of fish and fishing. So in my book it’s always better to try something (time permitting) than it is to intend to… and then never get around to it. But perhaps I think about this more than most. Nothing concentrates the mind better than not having a ‘next time.’ But not everyone thinks like this. One fishing accomplice of mine used to occasionally indulge this experimental side to my nature, but when the experiment didn’t work would declare,
‘I knew it wouldn’t work!’ So I was always the person coming up with dumb suggestions. But I would still rather check something out, than just assume an idea has no value.

  Many of my experiments these days concern bait presentation in moving water: If I moor at point A and cast to point B, the bait should settle somewhere, I reason, near point C. But I don’t know whether it will unless I try. Often it doesn’t work and I have to make adjustments, based on the new information I now have. Sometimes it now works, and sometimes it still doesn’t, so I have to think again. Over the years, through repeatedly doing this, I’ve developed a greatly improved feel for the three-dimensional complexities of strong currents, and an ability to get baits to settle and hold position in places where appearances suggest that they wouldn’t. Such places, of course, often hold big fish, and this approach has brought me a number of catches–notably goonch catfish, goliath tigerfish, and freshwater stingrays–that wouldn’t have happened had I been less experimental in my approach.

  Angling partnerships can also be great, sometimes, for the experimental process. You can bounce ideas around, spread your bets, and learn twice as fast. It’s significant that the early specimen groups of the 1960s, which made such strides in big fish catching, operated on the basis of pooling knowledge. It’s a bit like the way that science works, when working at its best. Then of course there’s a wealth of written material, which is a good way to benefit from the experimentation of others. But the challenge is avoiding the temptation just to follow what other people are doing. Where angling gets interesting is in contributing to the overall body of knowledge.

  One of my contributions is the following. Back when I was still carp fishing, I arrived at a new lake after dark. I walked around to the far side and set up in a spot where I could cast towards two islands: left-hand rod to one, right-hand rod to the other. Despite my excitement at fishing new water, the night was quiet, and for eight slow hours neither line moved. I don’t know why the left-hand bait was ignored, but at daybreak the reason why the right-hand one was untouched became clear. Although some things seem obvious, sometimes our knowledge is increased by testing what we think we know. In this case the obvious wisdom was correct. Don’t fish with your bait up a tree.

  Twenty years later I was paddling a wooden canoe on a lake in the Amazon, casting a floating lure to the margins. In places fallen tree trunks sloped into the water. Elsewhere the lake was overhung by tangled vegetation, and it was to one of these areas that I now turned my attention, and cast. A little bit shorter and my aim would have been perfect. As it was, my lure was hung up on a thin branch, about a foot from the surface. With a grimace I remembered the leg-pulling jibe that a local fisherman had once delivered: ‘Fishing for monkeys?’ But this hang-up wasn’t too bad, and I was using 80lb braid, so it was likely that a sharp pull would jerk it clear. But something stopped me. I would try something different.

  Taking up the slack line I shook the rod-tip, making the lure audibly rattle. Seconds later a sinuous shape, gold in color and nearly a yard long, launched from the water and freed the lure for me. It was an arowana (Osteoglossum bicirrhosum), a surface-feeding predator well known for its varied diet–which sometimes includes beetles sitting on branches. Because of this habit it’s also known as the water-monkey, and maybe that was the reason for my sudden impulse–and for the surprise catch that followed.

  18

  Be Opportunistic

  The tapah were proving tricky. This is the name in Malaysia for a fish (Wallagonia leerii) that looks quite similar to the European wels catfish. That is to say it’s a catfish with an elongated, somewhat serpentine body shape, as distinct from the more stocky-bodied species such as the North American blue, flathead, and channel catfish, and the South American piraiba. It’s also called the helicopter catfish, for reasons I’ve never been able to discover, unless it’s something to do with the very thin dorsal fin, which has just four soft rays behind the dorsal spine, giving it the appearance, if you use your imagination, of a propeller blade, or maybe a (short) helicopter rotor. Or it’s one of those lost-in-translation things: an obscure local name somewhere, for this fish of many aliases, that sounds somewhat like ‘helicopter.’ A bit like what happened when my friend the late Barrie Rickards, the well-known pike-fishing guru and writer, came fishing with me in the Amazon, and feigned trouble remembering the name of one of the fish we caught. Thus the pirapitinga (Piaractus brachypomus, known elsewhere as the pacu, and notable for its human-like teeth) became the paramedic…

  As usual, time was limited. I’d already searched the river with lures, casting from a drifting boat to all the likely looking holes along the overgrown and sometimes rocky banks, but without success. So it was time to defer to the local fishermen and concentrate on the handful of deep pools. Best bait, they assured me, was a livebait, ideally a smaller catfish.

  The day before had started very hopefully. At a pool where the river turns a 90-degree corner there had been a swirl near the far bank. We’d quietly paddled into position upstream of this spot, and I’d drifted a bait down, suspended under a sliding float. After a long wait with nothing happening, suddenly the float wasn’t there anymore. I waited then tightened, but back came just the bare hook. Kicking myself for not leaving it a fraction longer, I fished for the rest of the day without seeing any further activity. I started to wonder if I would look back on that as my only opportunity, missed because I did the wrong thing. Or maybe it had been a small fish, which couldn’t take the bait in one go. That was my preferred belief, but I was still keen to come back to this spot again. So before leaving I did a quick survey of the pool with the portable sonar I had with me, and sketched the depths–mostly eleven to seventeen feet–to give me a better mental picture for a return visit.

  On arrival the next morning we had a detailed plan, based on a better appreciation of the current and the underwater geography of the far bank. We would drift into a slightly different position, a little further upstream, and moor against a rock with the prow of the canoe protruding into the flow. From here I could much better control the drift of the float in the eddying current lines and thoroughly explore the zone where we’d seen the action. So we crossed the river with a minimum of disturbance, almost like a log floating down, and after some fiddly maneuvers on the other side we had the boat in the exact position I’d wanted. Holding my breath, I gently swung the bait out.

  Scarcely had the float slid up the line and settled against the stop-knot, and swung into position on the current-edge, when there was a bulging swirl on the surface. But this was behind us, in a large slack upstream. It didn’t take a lot of thinking about: I decided straight away to abandon our carefully set trap and reposition. That was a confidently hunting fish, active right now–a precise intersection of place and time. I needed to add a bait to the equation as soon as I possibly could.

  We slipped back across the river, paddled quietly upstream, then slid across again and tied alongside some fallen branches. The strike had been just under the surface, so I set the stop-knot so the bait would work in the top half of the water column, and gently cast. We sat and waited, as the float slowly wandered in the lazy current of the eddy. Nothing. I recast closer to the semi-sunken tree on the outside of the bend, and after another uneventful half hour coaxed the float into a line of flow that took it close alongside a patch of clear, steep bank. Still nothing, and no further movements, but I was confident the predator was still down there. Slowly I brought the bait back towards me, until it was more centrally positioned in the slack, closer to where the fish had swirled. Trees closed in above the river here, but a fish looking up would still see a strip of sky, and from the bank-side edge of the slack it would be aware of the bait, from time to time, as a moving silhouette. There was no way it could not have registered. It was time for me to stop over-thinking, and just wait.

  This is when, very often, I stop thinking like a fish–once the bait is in the water, and the trap is set. I bring my piscine alter ego back from th
e underwater realm, where it might bump into the fish I’m after, and let my mind go alertly blank. The origins of this date back to when I was in my late teens. At the time I was a newly joined member of the British Carp Study Group, and the group magazine was full of discussion about whether carp were telepathic. It wasn’t just that thing of them waiting until you had a scalding hot mug of tea balanced on your knee before they went tearing off with the bait, but something altogether more profound. Unfortunately I can’t look up the details now because I lent all my mags to somebody a few years ago and I haven’t seen them since. But I’ve learned more recently that some subsistence hunters also believe that animals know when they are being hunted, purely from the hunter’s thoughts. It’s one of those things that sounds very unlikely, but although there is no known mechanism, it’s also impossible to disprove. And because I’ll take anything that might give me a small edge when it comes to catching fish, I will often emulate those primitive hunters.

  So although I like to imagine myself under the water, as a means of working out where to place my bait, I often like to be in a different mental mode when the bait is out. It’s a state of alertness and readiness, but I’m not thinking about the fish. It’s a subtly different kind of focus: wide rather than narrow. I’ve no idea if it makes any difference at all to my results, but my hunch is that it does, because it makes me feel inexplicably more confident. As quantum physics has revealed, the presence or absence of an observer can change outcomes. Or regard it as just another kind of camouflage: dissolving into the background hum rather than loudly transmitting.

  So instead of staring at my float I was taking in the whole vista of the pool. It was simply a small red shape in an expanse of black water. And then there was no red shape. The braided line was sliding across the surface, making a miniature wake as it went, and pouring down a hole in the water’s skin into that other world.