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A recent thread about the origins of the swingtip had me scanning my book collection for a reference. Mistakenly I went down the wrong track which was most likely in a Peter Stone book and referred to him and Walker working on developing quiver tips. Unfortunately this coincides with some extensive decorating and recarpetting of our bedroom which, in turn, means that my fishing room is full to the ceiling with the bedroom’s furniture and the contents of all the drawers and wardrobe. Access to certain books is out of the question without mining equipment and I never did get to Gravel Pit Angling where I believe lies the reference.
I did though make a long and dangerous reach through toppling furniture and old jigsaw puzzles and reached The Best of Dick Walker’s Course Fishing, edited by Peter Maskell. Having flicked through a few sections I was hooked and sat to rediscover the writings of the greatest angler of them all. It was an eye opener.
It’s all there. So many current discussions and debates were dealt with long before 1988 when this collection was gathered. Indeed there are articles from as early as 1954. Subject matters cover such topics as an angler’s sixth sense, angling and astrology, the nature of the waterways, the fish themselves and particularly their senses of smell and eyesight. There is speculation and successes with baits, groundbait, methods, tackle and it’s development and many more. All delivered with Walker’s direct and unequivocal stance.
Why then would he be the foe to tradition? It’s because he spent his entire angling career questioning, debunking and correcting doctrine and belief. His goal was alway progress.
For me the best passage is bullishly entitled “Here’s my reply for those who are unable to accept my points of view”. In it he lists his accomplishments to date (1983) in response to being accused of being out of touch with the average angler and advocating archaic methods of fishing. I just hope that the gentleman who proffered that remark had a tin helmet. I shall copy the article in full as it is interesting, astounding and shows little regard for tradition. After a brief introduction his reply reads...
Long Time
I’ve been fishing for a very long time, during which I’ve never met either an average angler or an expert. The longer I fish, the more I realise how much remains to be learned . But, far from being out of touch with anglers generally, I doubt if anyone answers more letters, ranging from ten year old schoolboys to university professors, barristers and other professional men, than I do.
I have long since abandoned false modesty and there’s an old saying that if you don’t blow your own trumpet, nobody else will blow it for you. So this week, I’m going to blow mine, by asking some questions. Here they come!
Who wrote the first book about stillwater fishing, with special reference to the problems of catching specimen fish?
Satisfactory
Who designed and built the first satisfactory carp rod and has been designing carp rods, in cane at first, then fibreglass, and now in carbon fibre, with calculated tapers, ever since?
Who designed the first net big enough to hold a 50lb fish yet light enough to be used with one hand?
Who invented the electric bite alarm?
Who invented the Arlesey bomb, now to be found in nearly every coarse fish anger’s tackle box?
Who devised the combination of paste and crust that produced a slow-sinking bait that would come to rest on silkweed or soft mud?
Who invented vanes, like dart flights, for float tops, visible at long range and able to make use of the wind to take a bait to the right place? These floats are now used by many pike fishers.
Invented
Who invented a type of rod rest that ensured line would not be trapped between the rod and the rest.
Who pointed out again and again, that fixed spool reels needed rotating pick-up rollers, at a time when not one production reel was so fitted?
Who campaigned for knotless keepnets, year after year, until Mr C.J. Field pioneered their commercial production, with the result that they are not only in universal use, but in most areas compulsory?
Who invented the single and double Grinner knots, superior to any other kind of knot for joining nylon line?
Who was the first to detect the ‘vibration’ bite from barbel, as different from the simple rod-bending pull, and explain how to detect it?
Who after hearing that a former colleague, Mr Leslie Phillips, at the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough, had invented carbon fibre, went racing down there with Jim Hardy, of Hardy Brothers, to see how this new material might be used in fishing rods? (my emphasis)
Who was the first angler in the world to catch trout on a carbon fibre rod?
Who, after experimenting with a wide variety of different ways of joining hooks in tandem trout lures, finally discovered the best and easiest, namely a treble plait of 12lb nylon monofil?
Thorough
Who made a thorough investigation of the causes of loss of strength in nylon monofil, and discovered that it is due to either the effect of ultraviolet light, bright sunshine, or to wet oxidation, or both, refuting makers claims that nylon was rot proof?
Who discovered that the cracking of PVC coatings on modern fly lines was due to loss of plasticiser, brought about by a variety of factors including heat, the use of ordinary greases or simple time in storage? Who devised a special grease to restore lost plasticiser?
Who, with the aid of expert chemist Arnold Neave, devised a dip-in liquid that would thoroughly impregnate and waterproof dry trout flies, consisting of silicone and suitable wax in a solvent and which didn’t alter the colours of the fly?
Valuable
Who, year after year, kept insisting that legering was a valuable method for the matchman, at a time when float fishing was considered the only method worth using, and predicted that the day would come when the National Championship would be won with leger - and was proved right?
Who advocated the streamlined float with a central tube to allow its use as a slider, instead of the then universal cork bung with slit and peg? And illustrated it in a book published thirty years ago?
Who, in the same book, described the running paternoster, now more commonly called the link leger - and illustrated it?
Who first described and advocated, for some conditions, the method now known as ‘freelining’?
Who first explained how modern glass or carbon fibre rods could be broken by violent efforts to make such rods flex against their own slight weight, without sufficient load, in the form of either lead or fly line on their tips?
Who explained that if you halve the thickness of a line , it becomes sixteen times more flexible, and visa versa?
Who popularised the use of betalight floats in floats and other bite indicators? Fair enough, I know Peter Wheat was the first in the field but his efforts failed because the betalights he used were too feeble by far. It was left to someone to point out that a cheap betalight float that can’t be seen beyond 5 to 7 yards is a poor buy; better to spend a few more pounds for one that you can see at thirty yards or more!
Who explained to the tackle trade that centrifugal governors on multiplier reels were the wrong way round; that instead of adding extra braking as the spool speeded up, they should add it as the spool slowed down?
I leave readers to answer these questions and to decide how many of them have the same answer!
As for archaic methods, well, fish don’t change in less than a million years. If I fail to advocate the use, for example, of a range of fifty different baits involving organic chemicals and proteins, it is because I know that carp will eat almost anything unless experience has taught them that certain baits are dangerous.
Richard Walker
26th January 1983
Richard Walker, a pivotal man in the history of million upon million anglers. But is he the friend of the traditional angler or the antipathy of that ethos?
Discuss.
