John Bailey: Never underestimate your humble goldfish

I happened to be up early, an early tench session, of course, and managed to shoo the bird away over Norwich, but the damage had been done. Not only had a couple of orfe been taken, but the rest of the fish were so traumatised they skulked for two weeks before taking food freely again.

Nowadays, my adored fishes live in a cavernous Victorian brass bath, set amidst tomato plants, olive trees and tubs of cascading flowers. It’s all very Mediterranean and a little exotic, I like to think, but there’s nothing fancy about the stocks. A bunch of plebeian goldfish bought in from a local garden centre they might be, but I’ve learned not to underestimate them. A few days ago, come morning, one of their number was very obviously missing, gone AWOL in the night. Our kitten/turned cat remains the prime suspect, but Stanley, a voracious little puss from down the lane, remains in the frame. Or a fox of course, or a mink, or a heron again, but that’s not my point. Once again, the remaining fish have gone to ground, as it were. They have been sulking under stones, plants and shadows, not even coming out of sanctuary for food.

But how do my pond fish problems merit your interest as anglers, you rightly ask? I suggest there are two reasons for my little story.

First, we do well not to underestimate even the most humble of the fish we might hope to catch. These little goldfish could not have had lives more removed from the wild. They have been born and raised completely in captivity and in previously rock solid security, but they show that a single crisis they can learn from and react to. You’d think that as daft show fish, they’d be any predator’s pushover, but they are not. As anglers all of us, the lesson here is so obvious you don’t need me to spell it out to you, but I can’t resist doing so! Simply, if you want to catch any fish, wild or stocked, it makes sense not to spook them in any way that you can possibly avoid.

My second point is perhaps even more significant. It concerns the differing views of anglers and fishery scientists over the thorny issue of stocking waters where fish numbers are failing. A couple of weeks ago I was at the Game Fair in Worcestershire, taking part on various Q&A panels.

"I’m 35 and I’d like to take my two small daughters salmon fishing soon. My question is whether the panel thinks this is a waste of time, given the calamitous decline in salmon stocks these past 50 years, this century in particular”? So asked one gentleman, a query that certainly sparked debate.

A well known angler fishing the Tyne, a river kick-started by hatcheries (Image: John Bailey)

My answer, and the one backed by two other members of the expert (!) team, was that I lament the cessation of salmon hatcheries on UK rivers and the near blanket ban that the Environment Agency and other authorities have placed on them. If eggs are stripped and fertilised from a river’s indigenous salmon population, then the generic purity is maintained and the smolts and/or parr can be protected until the time comes for them to go to sea in far greater numbers than before. This procedure has helped make Iceland’s rivers so prolific and turned around the fortunes of the Tyne here, to give two examples out of hundreds.

The fisher folk in the audience generally cheered, but the fishery scientist tried to shoot us down. His perceived wisdom was that hatchery fish, reared in the security tanks afford, are vulnerable in a way naturally growing fish are not. He maintained that they had no defence mechanisms in place and would be annihilated in the cut and thrust world they would face after release. Hmm. Perhaps to a degree. But surely a 100,000 slightly dumb smolts are a better bet for the future that 100 wild ones by the simple law of averages. And then, vitally, consider my goldfish tale. Even the most nurtured of 'artificial' fish show a remarkable ability to learn from potentially fatal experiences.

This little piece has concerned itself with salmon and goldfish, but roach or barbel or any other species you might care to name have equal relevance, surely? On rivers nearly everywhere, fish stocks need a helping hand. Anglers recognise this. It’s a shame more fishery 'experts' do not.