The 'foreign fish', c'est magnifique!
Cavanman's Diary
Where anglers meet and the yarns start, they say there are three sizes of fish and they go in ascending order: big ones, bigger ones and the ones that got away.
With that in mind, I think I should tell you about the fish I caught. Well, to say ‘caught’ is not strictly true but, as it was one that got away, well, it’s safe to say that it was the size of a small boat, or maybe bigger. It was, needless to say, a pike - a big, greedy, handsome pike, green and speckled and beautifully-villainous looking.
It was last Sunday evening week and I took a stroll down to Lough Ramor, armed with my nine-foot pike rod, a trace, a pair of pliers, a rubber bait which looked like a roach (one of the pike’s favourite foods) and hope.
A few weeks ago, at Drumcor, between Redhills and Sctoshouse, my brother landed a monster. It has been playing on my mind since. I can picture the scene still; the splashes, the writhing, the snarls, the slime. The pike was pretty spectacular too, to be fair.
This was a 20lb beauty, who just couldn’t resist the dead bait thrown in along the edge of the reeds. That’s how pike hunt, they say; they roam in the weedy areas and they usually attack from beneath. They are predators who will devour anything in their path, cold-blooded assassins. They are the only freshwater fish in Ireland who can look you square in the eye, too. Truly, this mean marauder is unique.
The famous English poet Ted Hughes depicted them in his poem, titled simply ‘Pike’.
“Killers from the egg; the malevolent aged grin/ They dance on the surface among the flies./ Or move, stunned by their own grandeur/Over a bed of emerald, silhouette/Of submarine delicacy and horror.”
I have wanted to get even with my brother since but haven’t come close. I landed an eight-pounder on the Erne, alright, where we were guided by a Frenchman named Bruno, a devotee of the pike.
Bruno is from Bordeaux and is an expert fisherman. He lives in Killeshandra and guides tourists and the odd native along the local waters, along which he has kept a record of the exact location where the guts of 1,000 pike have been caught. His notes are a treasure trove.
“The pike, he takes the lure. Boom, c’est magnifique!” Bruno told us, describing a catch.
But for every lover of this predator, there is another who loathes it. The Irish word for pike is galliasc, which loosely translates as “the foreign fish”. There are no written references to pike in Ireland before the 16th century and it is thought they were introduced by the Normans.
It’s not xenophobia stoking this hatred, though; the hunter has become hunted because it is the enemy of trout and the former have been culled for decades to protect the latter. Driving through Oughterard in Co Galway not long ago, I actually saw a sign referencing some kind of a “war on pike”.
My own pike war is with my brother; who can catch the biggest one? So far, it’s him, despite my buying a lot of expensive gear and spending a lot of evenings sitting at the pier.
The fishing bug has bitten hard, though. We’ve set up a WhatsApp group called Fishing Is Life. On it, we share YouTube links to videos of people catching big pike.
A lot of these YouTubers are celebrities in their own right. They film their exploits and upload them; some are sponsored by the companies who make the gear (tackle, we anglers call it don’t you know). I find it riveting, even if the jargon can be over my head. One American pike angler described his set-up thus:
“Like I mentioned earlier, I’m throwing the Savage Gear 3D Suicide Duck today and I’m using my 6ft6 Medium Heavy Fast Action St Croix Bass-X rod for that. I’ve got a Quantum Vapour reel, I’m running 30lb Power Pro Super Slick V2 braid on that today. And I added an 8-inch leader that I tied on, of 50lb floracarbon.”
If you can understand all of that, you know more about it than me…
Anyway, to last Sunday week. I hooked this beast and did all the right things, or so I thought. I was already glorying in the catch but – rookie error – I had forgotten my landing net. As I drew the pike to the pier, she turned sharply and broke the line.
I was sickened. I have returned every evening since but haven’t had so much as a bite. I’m starting to wonder if I’ll ever catch a fish again. Every evening, I have told somebody else at the pier about The One That Got Away.
“Best of luck anyway,” one of the lads said, as he departed one evening. “I hope you catch one. And not nearly catch one.”
Sharp as a treble-hook… What could I do only, unlike the pike, swallow it and keep on moving.
To be continued… (If I catch one this week)!