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IMPORTANT
SITE UPDATE:
Visit the relaunched
Fish & Fly at fishandfly.com
A
Jerk On One End, Reflections of a Mediocre Fisherman by Robert Hughes
Reviewed by Terry Lawton
A Jerk On One End is a slim volume written by Robert Hughes who hails
from Australia although he has lived in the USA since 1970 where he has
been the Art critic for Time magazine for more than 25 years. The book
was published originally in hardback in 1999 and has just been published
as a paperback, no doubt in time for the Sydney Olympic Games. Thank God
fly fishing is not yet an Olympic sport.
The book is in three sections: Salt Water, Fresh Water and Troubled Water.
Although Hughes fished with his family in Australia, there is nothing
in the book to help anyone going to that country who might want to fish
there. Perhaps this is understandable after the dressing down he got from
his father when he caught a trout on a live grasshopper. "You got
that trout with a hopper. You will never do that again. People who use
live bait on trout are not fit to fish. They are thugs. They are barbarians.
They might as well be using dynamite." I am sure those who have dapped
live daddy longlegs or mayflies on Irish loughs will not see it that way.
He was to make up for it in later years when he caught a fish on a fly
of his own tying on "the near abstract perfection" of Spencers
Creek, a tributory of the Snowy River. The fish was a deep-bodied rainbow
with flesh of deep pink that he grilled over a fire of snowgum twigs for
his lunch. "I ate every scrap of him. I had never tasted anything
as delicious, or as sacremental. Later . . . it occurred to me that I
had at last done something, in relation to fish, of which my father would
have fully approved. But he was dead, and beyond approving anything."
There is plenty of good atmospheric writing about the trials and tribulations
of salt water fly fishing. The mighty marling caught by the likes of Ernest
Hemingway. He would not take the opportunity to catch a large bill fish
as the battle to bring it to hand to release it would probably kill it.
And there are few enough os such specimens left in the seas.
Out on the flats fishing for tarpon, he writes "Five or six at one
o'clock, 100 feet out," he (his guide) drawls, with the merest whisper
of an exclamation mark.". A fine turn of phrase. He certainly knows
how to put Bambi in his place: "the fawn with no anus"!
The last section, Troubled Water, is something of a diatribe against
commercial fishing. And quite justified it is too. Cyanide fishing for
reef fish? Yes, apparently. Not only does it kill fish, the fishermen
if they get it wrong but most significantly, the practice destroys the
coral reefs. He makes a passionate plea for a return to former standards
and the need to conserve stocks of sea fish and, most important, their
habitats.
As someone who disapproves of home freezing surplus fish, his comments
on those anglers who must catch their limit every time they go fishing
will make uncomfortable reading. And if those fishery owners who insist
on releasing specially fattened fish into their waters and those who want
to catch them, start to think about what they are doing and moderate or
alter their behaviour, then Robert Hughes will have succeeded in his aim
in writing this book.
He ends with a plea for moderation: "... to scale down your tackle,
to accept the gratification of medium success with more demanding techniques
in place of a big bag ... Nobody really respects a meat fisherman, except
other meat fishermen... It is better to release a fish than keep it, even
when minimum-size rules permit you to keep it." He claims that Dame
Juliana Berners was the first to promote the concept of bag limits and
catch and release back in the Middle Ages. Quite a thought.
A Jerk On One End, Reflections of a Mediocre Fisherman by Robert Hughes.
Published by The Harvill Press at £6.99. Paperback 115 pages. Also
available in hardback.
