by Will Millard
‘Not yet, mate, just had a take down here but I missed it, I think.’ We both look into the water. ‘Ja. There’s fish here all right.’ He leans over the railing, hoping to spot one on demand, and then gobs into the canal: ‘It all depends on the weather.’
I ask about his job and it turns out he isn’t a train guard at all.
‘It’s just a good thick coat and a snappy hat, don’t you think?’ I nod in approval and smile. I haven’t heard the word ‘snappy’ for over twenty years.
‘Plus you get plenty respect on the train.’ He laughs heartily.
My new friend and I both agree that there is a little perch under the bridge but, after a couple more casts, we surmise he’s probably not going to get caught today.
He shuffles off and so do I, downstream, passing Camley Street Natural Park, which had a couple of volunteers gamely tending to the shrubbery in the torrential rain, and on into my first lock.
St Pancras Lock is really very striking. A cute little whitewashed cottage guards the thick oaken lock gates and a string of canal boats line up along my side of the bank.
Each boat is a tiny commercial venture in itself; there are a bookshop, a garden store selling shrubs, even a floating coffee and cake shop and micro-theatre. I feel like I’ve been transported to the Cotswolds or the Norfolk Broads. The canal boat life looks undeniably quaint and, dare I say, quite attractive. I wish I’d thought of this when I was living here.
Sadly, I have only been on a canal boat once. It was on a stag do along a stretch of this very canal, much further upstream, somewhere between Leighton Buzzard and Milton Keynes, but, let me tell you, you get a very different experience with thirty drunken blokes dressed as pirates from the one you would onboard the artisan boats of King’s Cross.
Still, it was enough to let me know that the canal boat life probably isn’t for me after all. It’s cramped in there, with or without Long John Silver hogging the toilet, and it gets very cold in the mornings when you wake up at water level.
I forsake the immensely tempting cake and coffee and keep heading downstream in search of the elusive first fish.
Under a large railway bridge I finally get a rattling take that hangs on. After a short fight I’ve got a spiky London prince in my fingertips: a picture-perfect perch with beautiful markings. It has probably never seen a hook. I gently ease him back and re-cast. Another bite! This could be the mother lode! The next perch is near identical to the first, as is the next, and then I lose my hook on some lumpen piece of sub-aquan detritus.
That’s the game: every other cast is a bite and every one in between is a snag. I’ve got to keep it slow and steady to induce a take, but there’s always that risk of snaring up. It’s well worth it though: there’s a pod of perch hunting in here for sure.
Next cast I hook a much better fish that strips line from the reel, races through the legs of an office chair and manages to transplant my hook into the metalwork.
Bad news. I curse my luck. I’ve heard it said that big perch are the brainiest of all freshwater fish, and I know a good few anglers who always release them well away from their fishing mark, firm in the belief that a big one can get an entire shoal to back off the feed for the rest of the day, if they so wish.
I rest the swim for five minutes. A couple of long trains shake the thick, grey girders above my head, displacing a shower of pigeon poo into the water. I re-cast and ‘bang’, the fish are right back on it again.
For a while I’m getting savage bites but I just can’t seem to hook up. I try a firmer strike on the next take and the rod buckles down under an immense weight. This time it’s animate, and begins to move steadily downstream. There’s no jagging fight to be had here; I feel almost certain I’ve just hooked into a really big pike.
My tackle is light so I’ve got to be very careful now, but equally I can’t just let this fish dictate terms.
I walk downstream and everything goes solid once more. For a moment I think I’ve been snagged up by the fish again, but then, slowly, carefully, it starts moving upwards, towards me.
Hands shaking with adrenaline, I reach into my pocket and fish out my pike glove. I might only get one crack at this.
‘You take it?’ An extremely drunk man, who tells me he is from Poland, clutches his can of Tyskie lager and laughs so hard it echoes like thunder around the bridge walls.
I try again to get my hook out of the sleeve of the suit jacket. Some bloody pike that turned out to be.
‘Maybe you sell at fishmonger’s, get good price!’ There are actual tears streaming down the Polish man’s face now and he even starts to choke.
For a second I wonder if he’s having a heart attack, but he fortifies himself with a generous swig from his can of lager.
‘Yeah, very funny, mate.’ I try to conceal the rage gnawing my insides and with a hard yank finally free my hook.
I didn’t even see this man coming as I was hauling up the coat; it’s as if he just materialized from the water like a large, drunken canal spirit.
The jacket slopes back into the murk where I can’t retrieve it.
It hangs there with one arm in the air, like a creepy scene from an Asian horror movie: an indistinct demon crawling out of the water ready to feed on livers; mine, obviously, not the Polish man’s.
The very next cast brings me another perch. ‘I take it.’ I turn to see my new friend. He’s not laughing any more, in fact he’s deadly serious, eyeing me glassily, with one fat red hand outstretched towards me.
‘No, mate,’ I say casually, ‘it really should go back.’ I reach under the railing, ready to place it in the water, and feel his hand pressing heavily onto my shoulder.
‘No.’ He leans in. ‘I eat it.’
His hot, drunk breath slaps my face like a bar-room drip-tray and I realize I’m in a bit of a bind: on the one hand I’ve got the totally unnecessary and near-certain death of a tiny fish from a recovering canal, and on the other I’ve got this man bearing down on me with the real possibility of violence should I not concede to his demand.
With little time at my disposal I attempt to make it look like I just dropped the perch back in by accident.
‘You fucking English idiot!’ The man explodes, screaming with such force I almost jump into the canal in terror.
He throws both hands to the heavens and hurls his can high into the air until it comes crashing down in the middle of the canal with an immense splash.
Fishing’s over then, I think to myself, before rationalizing that I’m probably about to get beaten up very badly.
‘Look, I’m sorry, mate.’ The ability to reason with drunks has long been a skill I admire; my landlord friend tells me the trick is to speak to them like they are three years old: ‘I just think the fish should go back, it was only a little one anyway.’
This time round, I place my hand on his shoulder. It was only little, I’ve had bigger fish fingers, yet he looks at me like I’ve just insulted his wife.
‘Pizda!’ he screams, inches from my face, before storming off.
Later I check Google Translate and discover he was not actually asking me to buy him an alternative dinner.
I decided it was probably best to head down to the next bridge after that.
Perch after perch come to my line until I’ve had at least a dozen in ten minutes. Leaning, with my back to an impressive-looking piece of skull graffiti, I attempt a massive cast and watch my lure arch through the air to near certain fish; however, just as the hook strikes the water, I notice two approaching policemen. Instinctively, I just know it’s me they’re after.
‘Any luck so far?’ they say in unison.
They look almost identical; with neatly trimmed ginger beards and a slightly unnaturally chummy disposition that makes me feel deeply uncomfortable.
‘Er, yeah, quite a few perch,’ I stammer, trying to look as ‘not guilty’ as possible.
I’ve always been nervous around the police. Not because I’ve ever done anything really wro
ng, but because my mum’s dad used to find it funny to grab me in a headlock and shout: ‘I’ve got him, officer!’ at the top of his voice whenever he saw a police car. That feeling of latent criminality just kind of stuck with me.
‘Got your permit then, have you?’ they enquire with a well-practised airiness.
I actually do, of course, and happily present my rod licence. If that is all this is about, then I should be back fishing in seconds, I think.
‘Nah.’ They both look at me sternly.
Oh shit.
‘We want your Canal and River Trust permit.’
I don’t have one. I don’t even know what one is. I had simply assumed it was free fishing on this stretch of canal. The first time I’ve heard of this permit is right here, right now, in front of the Thompson Twins ginger edition.
I shuffle nervously and think about what prison might be like. ‘I’m really sorry, lads, I honestly didn’t know. I thought it was free fishing,’ I proffer desperately, appealing to their sense of compassion by being completely honest.
They consider my words, obviously sizing up the extent of my law-breaking behaviour, then, without warning, they suddenly change tack: ‘Look, we really don’t care, mate, between you and me this is a total ball-ache …’ answers one, looking at his feet sheepishly. ‘… but you’ve picked the wrong day to try this sort of stunt. The Canal and River Trust are actually here today,’ continued the other.
They both then give a worried glance over their shoulders.
Jesus, I think, who are these guys? If they’ve got the police anxious they must be the canal equivalent of the SAS.
‘Okay, guys, I’m not looking for any trouble. I’ll sling my hook.’
I hope that little joke at the end there might crack a sympathetic smile, but I’m sadly misguided.
‘Good,’ they say in harmony, before clicking their heels together and heading back in the opposite direction.
I don’t feel much like risking another cast after that and head back to King’s Cross with the deeply satisfying smell of perch on my hands: I’ve already had a brilliant day.
When I eventually made it back home I looked up the Canal & River Trust and discovered, to my eternal shame, that it was only £20 for a permit that covered this section of the Grand Union Canal and a great many other canals right across the UK as well, for an entire year.
They had an email address for contact, so, with a little Dutch courage, I fired off a few words requesting a chat.
I noticed I had another email in my inbox. It was from the interview earlier that morning and it informed me that I hadn’t got the gig.
Maybe taking your rods to work isn’t always the greatest move after all.
John Ellis had such a nice lilting accent and calm manner that I struggled to associate him with the threat of spectacular violence over the wrong fishing permit, but I thought it was still best to play my cards very carefully.
Whenever I’ve encountered the people who work the closest with nature they almost always exude a Zen-like sense of eternal perspective. It is as if they have already realized their life’s work will last long beyond their graves and ‘that’s just fine, thanks’.
It is more than just a job to these people, and their knowledge of their area is usually encyclopedic, and so it was with John, the National Fisheries and Angling Manager for the Canal & River Trust: ‘We look after every water the CRT owns, that’s some two thousand-plus miles of canals and seventy-odd still waters right across the UK,’ he effuses. ‘Last year there were 61,000 members of our canal clubs, making us the biggest owner of canal-fishing rights in the UK.’
I was far too ashamed to attempt a question about the number of people that fish without permits, plus I didn’t want to stop John in full flow. ‘The second thing we do is asset management: looking after the fish stocks, the engineering works, repairing riverbeds or draining the locks; right up to fish rescue, when we’ve had to drain a canal or temporarily relocate fish.’
My ears pricked right up next to the phone receiver: ‘Really, John, so it’s probably fair to say that if there was, say, a record fish to be had from a canal then you would be the man to ask?’ I gently probed.
‘Absolutely!’ he replied enthusiastically, as I fist-punched the air. ‘On the Grand Union Canal for example, just up by the Watford Gap service stations, we found the most massive eel: it was eight pounds, two ounces!’
I was gobsmacked. That is basically an anaconda. I made a note to hit that very spot later in the year for eels.
‘It wasn’t alone actually,’ continued John, perhaps mistaking the silence on the line for indifference from my end, ‘there was another with it, which weighed six pounds, fourteen ounces.’
‘Jesus Christ, John!’ I exclaimed. ‘That’s two fish, probably several feet in length, in one stretch of canal!’ I was on the verge of losing it, but there was more to come: ‘They weren’t just in the same stretch of canal, Will! They were both in the same lock together: trapped!’ I was basically beside myself; this was a truly astonishing piece of information.
‘If you are interested in eels –’
I interrupted him: ‘I am, John, VERY interested …’
‘Well,’ he continued, ‘then you’ve just got to try the Monmouth and Brecon Canal, there’s plenty of two-pound fish in there; it’s practically paved with the things, who knows how big they’ll go? But I’ll tell you what else, Swansea Canal near to you is absolutely full of brook lamprey as well.’
I could scarcely believe what I was hearing. The brook lamprey from my childhood had returned, thriving in another body of turbid water. Perhaps it wasn’t such a rare occurrence as I first thought?
‘In September we did some dredging works to remove the silt and caught over a thousand in just one four-hundred-metre stretch. They are thriving, they just love the silt!’ John continued with a schoolboy’s enthusiasm.
Our chat went on at a feverish pace and by the time we were through his list of potentially record-breaking canals I thought my writing hand was going to fall off: 15lb slab-sided bream from the Regent’s Canal, pike over 30lb in the Ashby and Coventry canals, giant perch from the Leeds and Liverpool; it was quite conceivable that I could have attempted this entire challenge from Britain’s canal systems alone.
However, there was one irrefutable and unavoidable detail: although the heavy weights in themselves were undeniable, the sheer number of big individual fish coming out of the commercially stocked lakes far outstripped those that came from the canals.
‘Well, the management of those commercials is always going to have a big impact on the weight of any fish. What with all those piles of protein-rich baits fed in just to attract the carp.’
There was a pause on the line. I knew what John wanted to say next, it was obvious: ‘But ask yourself this, Will, would you feel a greater sense of achievement catching a known giant artificially reared in a pond, or a wild unknown that’s built the foundation of its size and strength purely on its own cunning and guile?
‘For years the record tench came from a canal,’ John lamented. ‘It was from the Grand Union Canal’s Leicester line. That record stood right through till the 1960s, seven pound something it was, but today the tench record stands at over fifteen pounds; over double the size of the record that once stood for decades.’
Commercials had changed everything. Even I had caught a tench over 7lb from a commercial fishery in the past; a great fish without doubt, but I had no idea it would once have been a new national record. I don’t even think I thought to photograph it.
‘It’s possible that the canals could still turn up a record one day; I don’t believe those big eels will find their way out of the canals and back to the sea too easily; and canal catches have never been better, you know; but without doubt the biggest threat to our canals is the lack of anglers,’ continued John flatly. ‘There are many, many more people choosing to seek their thrills from commercial fisheries, and some of our best canals are falling
into a state of serious neglect.’
John believed the mentality of the angler had fundamentally altered. ‘We are missing a whole generation of people that learnt to fish on the canals. I grew up on the Llangollen Canal, it cost me my place in medical school,’ he quipped, ‘but all the kids want is the guarantee of big fish these days.’
I offer my theory that most people, including myself once, didn’t actually see the city canal as a place where fish live; that we have this prevailing myth that a lot of them are completely devoid of life.
‘Yes,’ John agrees, ‘then we make these school visits and netting trips and the kids are absolutely amazed!’
It had been fascinating chatting to John, but also really quite sad to think that this iconic natural resource was falling into a state of such serious disrepair through little more than neglect and ignorance. What was for sure, though, was that the Canal & River Trust desperately needed the funds from fishing permits to keep all their important work going; so, feeling like a first-class ‘pizda’, I sheepishly promised to make a donation to the Trust and swore I would never fish again without double-, triple-, checking I had the right permits.
Sometimes in life it isn’t the threat of trouble, or getting caught out, that makes you follow the rules, but actually the idea that you might not be taking your very own opportunity to help preserve something you love.
Storm Barney gave way to Storm Desmond and the rain did not stop until the middle of January.
I had arranged to fish with the wonderful-sounding Perchfishers club on the River Ivel in December, but the weather soon put paid to that, and with John Ellis’s ringing endorsement in my ears I decided the time was probably right to try another canal for my next predator.
I had made a start in my quest, but really, in terms of catching a record, my time with the perch had been an absolute failure.
This was obviously going to be a lot harder than I thought, and there are no advancements in fishing tackle or increases in the number of specimen fish that were going to gift me a first-class catch without a great deal of hard graft and sacrifice beforehand. Still, I had made a start and thoroughly enjoyed targeting something new, and that definitely counted for something.