John Bailey: An abiding fishy mystery

Though we’re going back a fair while, I remember the occasion well, in part because the pond in question sat in the garden of an exquisite cottage, lost in woodland. So lost in fact that when I tried to find it again recently, I never came close. I just recall a hollow, the trees around, a Hansel and Gretel old and crooked house, a wood shed and, of course, the pool. It seems that this fairy tale will ever be a part of my dreams alone then, but at least I have the image of this fish to remind me. 

I apologise that the photograph this week might not stir your soul exactly, but it should galvanise our brains perhaps instead. Superficially, we are looking at a rather drab little fish no more than, what, eight inches long or thereabouts. It’s of pleasing colour and delicate shape and I have learned to cherish every fish, however humble. Especially this one… whatever is it?

I asked the question in this paper I seem to remember at the time and no one came back to me. I wasn’t concerned because I knew I’d get an answer soon enough. But that’s not been the case. Although I have toted a print around with me for a whole decade and shown it to a hundred fishery experts of note, not one has the foggiest idea what our little treasure might be. 

Let’s look at British freshwater culprits first? It’s not a roach, rudd, chub or dace, although the body shape looks a little dace like, some have commented. The anal fin is properly concave and the mouth looks possibly correct, but the colour is way out and there isn’t a dace river for miles around that I know of. Without an adipose fin, it’s obviously not a member of the salmonid family and I can’t think of any European fish that would quite fit the bill. It’s certainly not a nase, as one expert suggested, and nor do I see it as a whitefish like a vendace, a species confined to glacial lakes. 

So, could it be a hybrid of some persuasion? I’ve seen roach/chub and roach/bream hybrids, but nothing like this. A chub /dace hybrid? But do they actually hybridise anyway? How about the unthinkable, a roach/crucian carp hybrid? After all, both species did exist in my fantasy pond, so perhaps this fish is a biological first? Or is it something so easily identifiable that I and my professorial friends have been blind to the obvious all these years? After all this time, I’d love to know. And where that pond is too, come to that!

April has coughed up a few quandaries over the years. For example, where did the Snow White bream shoals go? Until five years ago the main lake there produced spring bream catches of historic magnitude.

Pals and I could catch 30 fish a day, each, with no bother - astounding when you think these fish averaged around nine pounds. Then, with staggering speed, we stopped catching. Nor did we see bream roll or colour the surface as we had done. It was just as though they had been hoovered out overnight.

There were never bodies to be seen but had they all reached a certain age and died out en masse as it were? There had never been any smaller fish caught in amongst the large ones so it’s a thought, although a far-fetched one I’d agree. Or is there something more sinister going on? For a long while the land around had been used as a dump for all manner of industrial materials and I just wonder if toxins had eventually leached through the sandy soil and done its worst?

We’re obviously coming to that time when vast carpets of elvers would have scaled our rivers and streams 30 or 40 years ago. What has happened to them, unless a reader can tell us of some precious watercourse where this life-affirming spectacle still takes place? Sea trout too. Fifty years ago, this was the time I’d be catching many a silver beauty of 10lb or more anywhere along the coastal rivers of our north coast here in Norfolk. Doubt I’d be so lucky today. 

John Bailey with a 2lb-plus rod-caught crucian (Image: John Bailey)

Rooting around in my photos from April 2013, I also came across an image of me with a 2lb-plus rod-caught crucian. I didn’t think much of it then as I’d had hundreds that size during my younger years, but know what? I haven’t had one that big from Norfolk since then, not by a long chalk that I can remember. So, another question. Any ideas where this sad old angler can catch a big crucian again to remind him of happier times?