John Bailey: Angling the Generation Z way

After a great deal of head scratching, I think I’m right to say anglers (and all people too, anglers or not) born between the wars are classified as the Silent Generation, though quite why 'silent' defeats me. In angling terms, this Silent lot were magic. Think Dick Walker, Fred Buller, Hugh Falkus, anglers who truly changed the face of fishing forever… and had a lot to say for themselves to boot!

Bizarrely, despite never having children, I qualify as a Baby Boomer, an angler aged roughly between lates 50s (?) and early 70s. We got a lot done, building on the work of Walker and pals. This was the era of the specimen hunter, the John Wilson laugh and the floppy hat. Generation X followed us and perhaps that’s when fishing began to take a nose dive into the carp obsession we see still alive and kicking today. Many of us Baby Boomers foresaw the robotic dependence on bolt rigs coming and we were right to fear it for the deadening impact on creativity it has had.

Then we have The Millenials, anglers in their 30s and 40s, still carp bonkers some of them, but showing a little more imagination than the Gen Xers. Indeed, if my maths is right, Norfolk maestros like Josh FIsher and Robbie Northman squeak into this bracket and, my, what ingenuity they show.

Even talking to Robbie is exhausting, such is the angling merry-go-round life he lives. He’s just had a whacking wild Norfolk brown trout that took him weeks of dawns and dusks to outwit, but there’s no fish alive that can escape Northman when he has the thrill of a campaign running through his veins. The extraordinary Alan Blair is another Millennial (I think) who never sleeps and catches fish in ways that the Silent Generation would never have thought remotely possible.

Now, if I have my terms correct, the angling world belongs to Generation Z, those in their teens and 20s who, if The Guardian has it right, are embracing angling in ways that have us all astonished. That paper recently ran a report on Zers who fish lures and flies before school, between lectures and in their office lunch breaks. One guy suggested that if you live or work anywhere near a pond, a canal, a river or a large puddle, half an hour is quite long enough to catch a couple of good ‘uns. Blimey, I know Baby Boomer matchmen who take three times as long as that to unpack their trolley. I love this approach and in my own way, I’ve followed it myself these past 20 years to a degree. I’m not pure Gen Z because I still like to use bait and I’ll put long sessions in if I feel a need, but I like to keep on the move and use methods that are about action not snoozing. It seems to me that Zers are hunters not ambushers, and that’s good by me.

Matt, Heidi and a Gen Z tench (Image: John Bailey)

This brings me nicely to a river bank date I’m looking forward to immensely. Norfolk father and daughter team Matt and Heidi Gallant are soon having a day with me after barbel. Matt, I guess, is a Millennial, and Heidi definitely a Zer, but they are united in their desire to be proactive, to wade, to float fish, to roll baits, to move swims and to explore as many nooks and crannies as they can find in the course of their quest. I’ve fished with them in the past for tench and even on a still they are all about imagination and invention, so I guess they will relish the river challenge even more.

You could dismiss this column as the ramblings of a tired angling hack desperate for copy, but I do think there have been shifts in the way angling has been conducted even in my lifetime. Many anglers of the Silent Generation (and before) who have long since passed would be gobsmacked by the antics of the Zers... or would they? Lord Grey, our Foreign Secretary during the Great War, was at Winchester as a boy and able to fish the Itchen for its trout, but only for fractional periods sandwiched between prayers, lessons, games and prep. He’d fly to the river, gown billowing, make a few feverish casts and be back in time for Latin... a Zer in every way but for the century he inhabited.

Something else that has never changed is the certainty that there is no better angling teacher for a child than a parent. Heidi is a lovely, lucky girl whatever her generation and may her barbel be a big one, I’m hoping!