Coarse Fishing

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30793, 3 July 1965, Page 4

Coarse Fishing

Match Fishing. By Bernard Donovan. Stanley Paul. 110 pp.

At the beginning, a fly-fisher might feel intolerant with a little book which describes the competitive fishing organised by clubs in English waters, the take being aided by pre-seeded ground-baits like old cheese and fresh maggots. However, fishing with light-weight tackle is no preserve for snobs and when it is realised how skilful coarse fishing, for roach, bream, chub, barbel, indeed is, the book will steadily attract the true angler, that is, one who likes to be within the country or seashore evironment and who is aware of being engaged in a battle of wits.

There is much to commend the order of competitive match fishing, with competitors at designated “pegs,” recording their catch—and returning much of it, live, to the water for another day. A

contrast is with the disorder and acrimony of competitive stroke-hauling for salmon at the mouth of the Rakaia, a New. Zealand character-piece in the same class as strokehauling for beer in a crowded pub. It seems likely that some of the techniques outlined could be used with success in some of our deep sluggish streams where trout are disinclined to surface-feed, but spare us from the preliminary of finding a ripe dead pigeon to be further incubated as a source of supply of “gozzers”—a special form of maggot that evidently is irresistible to coarse fish.

The good photographs illustrate tackle (swing-tips and sliding floats, etc.) and good types of water, but the author like many, is cagey about disclosing precise details that have accounted for his success. It is a general discourse and commentary not giving away much to the other clubman, but diverting and readable throughout.