Just Sixteen
By Trevor King
If, from his earliest beginnings, man has attempted to catch fish, then he probably has also sought later to exaggerate the size of his catch. It starts young: Gary, the school bully at my primary school – always the one with the chopper bike, all the Action-Man stuff, etc. etc. – also fancied himself as owning the best rod. It was a slick, black, American bait-caster, with a crank handle, far more expensive than my own little green rod, but – at only about five feet long – ultimately quite useless. Hah!
This lack of rod-length did not stop Gary (you knew what his name was, because his beige corduroy jacket had ‘Gary’ emblazoned on the back in metal studs) boasting about the pike he had caught, though. Loads of pike, and, of course, he had been bitten by the biggest and meanest of them. He had the scars on his hand to prove it. No matter that I could never actually see any scars, but to point this out would have been to risk yet another of his beatings. In fact, I never believed him about any pike at all, but I could never say anything for the same reason, and Gary went on telling his tales. If nobody ever saw him with anything bigger than a bleak, you should have seen what he caught yesterday…..
We all caught bleak and minnows and the occasional gudgeon. But always, the others would just happen to take something spectacular from the river when no one else was around. Nobody except Paul and his little brother David was there the day that David hooked and landed a barbel on the rod he had made out of a garden cane, several paper-clips, some sellotape and a reel of cotton. Now stop getting misty-eyed at the thought of this, dammit, because it was all a big fib, but, at the time, I could not say too much, because I thought I was the worst fisher-boy out of the lot of us. Perhaps I, too, should have learned to lie, along with the rest of them.
A generation later, and kids had stopped fishing for bleak (because they had largely disappeared), and started to boast of the carp they had caught. Whereas you knew that had all been to precisely the same crap-pool, and taken the same stunted seven-pound mirrors, they would all say things like: "I ‘ad a Firty out, me!" and: "And my Dad ‘ad a Fifty!" I always wondered what Grandad would have caught, had he been with them.
As I say, though, it only starts with the kids. Then the kids grow up (well, sort of) but the stories remain the same: the fish are implausibly big and, if you have not actually caught a carp larger than thirty pounds, you make one up to suit. Now the Big Barbel Thing has happened. I knew something was up, the day that an angler on the Royalty netted a ten-pounder, and was surrounded by those bullish looking types who cloak their excitement at seeing a big fish with a sullen, knowing air. They all stood around, looking as if they were chewing toffees with their bum-cheeks. "What you ‘ave it on – meat?" one said with the unspoken suggestion that anyone not using the latest expensive, high-protein concoction was a mere prole. Never mind whose net the fish was in of course.
The Big Barbel Thing really has done something strange to a lot of anglers’ sense of perspective though. Many theories have been forwarded as to why the Barbel have become bigger, ranging from mild winters, through signal crayfish and high-nutrition baits, to the benign effects of Bernard Matthews’ Wafer-Thin Turkey-Ham. None of these fully explain the phenomenon, but the fact is that the old Tryon/Wheeler/Wallis records probably do not even make it into the top 100 catches now and Keith the Barbel is said to be certain to come out at over twenty pounds by the end of the season.
Anglers really ought to rejoice at all of this, because there are big Barbel to be had all over the place, not just from the ‘in-form’ rivers, but nowadays, even traditionally ‘big’ Barbel are regarded as ‘small’ by this overspill from modern carp fishing.
The weeklies do not help. They are often full of reports like ‘Big Frank, a bricklayer from Feltham, waded through seven small whiskers between eight and ten pounds before connecting with the big beard’. I am sorry, but no matter what happens on the Bedford Ouse, an eight-pound barbel is not ‘small’. We should take up full-page adverts in the weeklies, we should post placards, we should have an aeroplane to tow an aerial sign, all with the message ‘An eight-pound barbel is still a big fish!’. In fact, it is a mantra that anglers should be forced to repeat three times before being allowed to purchase a rod license. All this must be done now, to stop this nonsense. Those anglers who have yet to land their first eight-pounder, yet who publicly sniff at anything less than a "firteen" must surely be shown the error of their ways…
One evening in July, a couple of years ago, I set up my rod at my favourite stretch of the Kennet in Reading. On the opposite bank was a young lad in his teens who often turned up at around late afternoon, with a rod, a rest and a white tackle-carrier-bag, and was usually gone before dusk. I had seen him take the odd chub of a couple of pounds, that sort of thing, which he treated with reverence and not a little excitement.
The lad spoke in that oddly high-pitched whine that many post-pubescent adolescents adopt once their voice has broken, and they have acquired their first Ford Fiesta with a ‘Kenwood Max Power Mission’ transfer in the rear window. It always seems to me that they are trying, for some reason, to ignore the fact of impending manhood. Why this should be is a mystery to me; personally, I could not wait for manhood when I was that age. (In fact many people, mainly women, have kindly informed me that I am still waiting). But high-pitched voices, short, gelled hair, sticky-out ears, and white baseball caps, are all de riguer, and why are they all called ‘Craig’ or ‘Dean’? "CLOVE MATE", that was this particular ‘Craig’s’ tip for "PUTTIN’ ‘EM ON THE BANK!". Or "A BIT O’ CURRY ON YER LUNCHEON MEAT MATE! THE ROD GOES RAHND – BOOF!!" I thanked him politely for his tip, and continued with a bit of my own bait. "WOT LINE YER USING? I USES DOUBLE STRENGF, ME! BEST LINE THERE IS! BETTER THAN THAT MAXIMAS RUBBISH! I’AD ONE SMASH ME RIGHT UP ON THAT STUFF, MATE!"
I quickly found that the only way that I could counter this almost continuous onslaught of ‘advice’ was to completely ignore the lad and continue feeling my Maxima for bites whilst hoping he would go away, which he usually did – inexplicably – just at that point in the evening when the gudgeon and dace had stopped nibbling away at the hook-bait and at any moment the line would be pulled from my fingers.
Myself and ‘Craig’ spent an odd few months. He would often be there, but for some reason, neither of us ever witnessed the other catch a good fish. He would always say he had caught a seven-pounder at about four o’clock in the afternoon, and he would always have gone by the time that I got my first bite, if indeed a bite there was to be had. For some reason, however, I came to almost like the lad. Except for the high voice (and the fact that he was often surrounded by a bevy of young girls), he reminded me strangely of another callow, spotty youth from my own past. Indeed, I remember once telling a match-angler with whom I was having a row about how I sought to take proper care of barbel (and whom I later saw throw a good-sized chub into mid-river with a might splash and a cry of "Flying Fish!!!"), that I had caught "….more barbel than you’ve had hot dinners". In fact, the barbel in question was my third ever. I was sixteen.
This evening, however ‘Craig’ was there when I caught a fish. The bite came just as
the sun sank below the mish-mash of buildings and trees that passes for an horizon in Reading. BOOF! Went my rod-top as I struck (I understood from ‘Craig’ that Barbel would often make the rod do this), and the clutch on my Mitchell reel buzzed. I shouted for my Father, who was not yet at the waterside. "HAVE YOU GOT ONE?" shouted ‘Craig’, appearing directly opposite: "I BET IT’S A MONSTER!"
"I don’t know yet" I replied, truthfully, "They all feel like this at first!"
"I BET IT’S A MONTER, MATE!" he repeated.
"Maybe," I replied. "I honestly won’t know for a minute or so…."
"YEAH, THAT’S A MONSTER ALRIGHT! ……I ‘AD A SIXTEEN POUNDER OUT FROM ‘ERE LAST YEAR!"
I momentarily forgot that my arm was being wrenched from my shoulder and stared at him:
"What?"
"I ‘AD A SIXTEEN POUNDER OUT LAST YEAR, FROM JUST DAHN THERE! I WAS LEISURING AHT IN THE MIDDLE, AND THE ROD JUST WENT RAHND: ‘BOOF!’ IT WENT! TERRIBLE SCRAP IT PUT UP!"
To which he added; "STRAIGHT UP, MATE! HONEST!"
This last bit struck me immediately as odd; I was not aware at that point that I had shown any disbelief whatsoever. (Okay, I admit that my mouth was hanging slackly open, but I had not actually said anything). Then a vicious lunge and a squealing clutch had made me realise that I had far more pressing matters to attend to than the report of a possible new Kennet record.
My father arrived next to me. "What was the kid shouting about?" he asked.
"Says he had a sixteen last year…………" I replied.
Somewhat ungraciously, my father shouted across: "And did the pig shit in your eye as it flew over?"
I do not think Dad believed him, somehow.
The next bit was almost surreal. The Barbel had proven itself to be a very good fish, and I knew that I would have to endure several long runs off the clutch before the fish would be netted, so I needed to concentrate on where it was going, and pray that it would not head under any of the nearby boats. Unfortunately, ‘Craig’ by this time obviously peeved that we were not throwing ourselves down in ecstatic supplication at the feet of a superior angler, was leaping up and down immediately opposite, shouting:
"THAT’S ONLY A BABY! I ‘AD A SIXTEEN POUNDER! A BABY YOU’VE GOT THERE, MATE! SIXTEEN PAHND, ME! SIXTEEN PAHND! ….SIXTEEN PAHND!!! ……. SIXTEEN PAHND!!!…………."
You get the picture.
Finally, I landed it. It was long, and it was fat. From its dimensions against the net, I knew it would be about thirty inches long to the tail tip. In fact, I knew the fish as one I had landed the previous February at a shade over ten pounds, but ‘Craig’ was not to be silenced.
"THAT’S ONLY A BABY, MATE, THAT ONE! I ‘AD A SI……….."
"Yes, you said; a sixteen pounder," I said, admittedly irritated by the lad by this point. "Look, this isn’t a baby – it’s well over nine pounds!" To be honest, I was mainly irritated by the fact that he was being disrespectful of such a lovely fish.
"YEAH, WELL, I ‘AD A…………."
"Have you got a photograph of it?" I asked. That floored him for a second…..
"……..no……..," he replied, hesitantly. Then he puffed back up "BUT MY MATE WITNESSED IT!"
"Oh, that would be your mate ‘Dean’ would it?" I thought, sourly. "What sort of scales did you weight it on?"
"PROPER KILOGRAMMES ONES!" he replied. "SIXTEEN PAHND IT WERE! STRAIGHT UP! BLOODY MASSIVE IT WERE!"
"I’m sure it was ……….er, how long was it?"
"THREE AND A HALF FEET IT WERE! MASSIVE, IT WERE!"
Three and a half feet? I looked at my Barbel. It was two and a half feet long. It weighed over nine pounds. (In fact, I knew of one barbel which was two inches shorter, yet weighed well over fourteen pounds. Unfortunately, it was not me that caught it). How much would a Barbel of three and a half feet weight? Well, as a rough guide, how much does a three and a half foot long pike or grass carp weight? Twenty-five pounds, minimum?
As we slipped the fish back, Craig stomped off, rod, rest and white tackle-carrier-bag in hand, our hero having obviously remained unimpressed with this tale. Would he ever repeat the story? Certainly we were never to see him again, though we did not know that at the time.
"Did you believe him?" asked my father.
I weighed up what he had said; sixteen pounds and what, exactly he did not say …. No photographs …. Surely he would have let the press know and a three and a half foot long Barbel would have been positively emaciated if it had only weighed sixteen pounds.
"On balance? Nope. I think he got a bit carried away, to be honest."
"Exactly" said my father, "The little…………."
* * *
I will tell you what though, despite the lad being so obviously away with the fairies, there was something that kept me awake that night. It was a far-off, disembodied, high pitched voice: "….sixteen pounds!…." it kept saying, "…..sixteen pounds! …………sixteen!…………….
..sixteen!……………..
…sixteen!…
…sixteen pounds!…
Trevor King
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