David West – Beale & The Mystery Fish

Like many of us, I have spent more than one evening of late ruminating on plans for the coarse fishing season ahead and reminiscing over memories of the season just gone. All fishing seasons are different, some subtly so, while others may shine and sparkle and stand out as being dramatically different from the average – perhaps because of some ambition fulfilled, new friendships made on the bank, a magical new water discovered, or perhaps an unexpected red letter day. 

When I come to think of it, these might just be all of the ingredients required to make up a perfect fishing season for oneself, and even if we are gifted with just one or two of these we may consider ourselves blessed.

**********

30th July

My rod tip is poked through a small gap in the reeds that line the small lake. At regular intervals permanent swims are marked out with square frames of timber infilled with hardcore. At least there are no high-rise ‘fishing stations’ – call me a snob if you like, but I find these an anathema to my delicate sensibilities. In fact, the lake has been laid out with some sensitivity, and it’s possible to hide yourself away in one of the thoughtfully sculpted bays and forget that you are not fishing some delightful little medieval stock pond or other.

Except, perhaps, for the variety of fishy denizens swimming here. As well as the ubiquitous king carp, there are true crucian, tench, roach, rudd, gudgeon, ide, chub, goldfish, common bream, silver bream, and hybrids thereof … the list goes on, and rumour has it there are even two sturgeon finning about in this genetic soup kettle. The fishery owner I think, is a bit like a Dr Frankenstein piloting an aquatic Noah’s Ark. But I’m here to try to catch a species, which, depending on your point of view, is perhaps even more outlandish than the sturgeon. 

Given that it’s now high summer and agreeably warm, I’m reasonably confident of success today, given that I managed to catch my first example of the ’mystery fish’ on a cold sullen March afternoon last season. There is an added element of jeopardy however. (I hesitate to use the word ‘pressure’ for its negative connotations which I give no place to in my angling. Jeopardy I prefer, for all of the best games have an element of it.) Jeopardy because news of my first capture of the mystery fish travelled far and wide and led to my interrogation by noted piscine species hunters Dr Redfin himself and Jack Perks, the underwater film maker. Dr Redfin, aka Mark Everard, is a globally renowned Professor of Fish, and Jack has just released his seminal film Britain’s Hidden Fishes narrated by no less than Jeremy Wade, star of TV’s River Monsters. But that’s enough name dropping. Both Mark and Jack have yet to catch today’s target species here in the UK, which is probably reflective of the fact that there are only three or four places in the British Isles that the mystery fish is known to swim. More pertinently, both anglers have driven some considerable distance to join me this morning, hoping to benefit from my ‘wisdom’ as a local guide. Cripes. Jeopardy indeed.

I show Mark and Jack to the swims I trust will produce for them, and share with them my boundless wealth of experience, which basically amounts to recommending a single maggot on a small hook float fished close to the reeds. Leaving them to it, I settle in to a small nook a few swims down and nip red maggot on to a size 19 barbless hook pilfered from my fly tying box. The bait is suspended in midwater below a small porcupine quill float that forms part of a small collection gifted to me by my dear old dad. Porcupine quill is of course no longer in common circulation in the shops, and rightly so, given the clamp down on trade of endangered animal body parts. But on the other hand it would compound the sin to waste such a float, just as it would be a sin to remove the ivory keys of every old piano.

Back in those less enlightened days we enjoyed the excellent float making properties of the porcupine quill, and today, for me, to swing one out is to float again a cherished memory of fishing with dad, a little connection that keeps him with me in some small way. And yes, a tear does come to my eye as I write this, but I digress, because today is all about helping my new friends achieve one of their own small angling ambitions. And small is the operative word. Although our quarry can grow to a staggering eleven inches in length, in this lake, four inches would be a good fish, and six inches a specimen. 

I sit and patiently watching my float, and in truth my patience is barely tested at all because within a few minutes its tip disappears in response to a sharp and confident pluck. I lift, feel a wriggling weight and find myself treated to the agreeable picture of the morning sunshine glinting on the back of a diminutive but pristine roach. Back it goes and so does my float, together with a sparse scattering of maggots. The float dips, shoots under and this time the little fish I’m connected to darts back towards the reeds, before I lift and swing it in. It sits in my hand, vaguely piranha like, its lower lip jutting belligerently, regarding its new surroundings with a dark and slightly oversized eye. Its golden flanks are overlaid with a turquoise sheen and punctuated with bronze flecks so that the fish’s scale pattern almost looks pixillated. A bright orange fleck marks the apex of its gill plate and a long spined dorsal fin betrays its membership of the grand order of Perciformes or perch-like fish. It is a fine example of Lepomis gibbosus, and quite beautiful. More commonly known as pumpkinseed or panfish across its home range in the United States, Lepomis gibbosus is considered to be an invasive species across Europe, but although present in the UK across a handful of sites it has remained to my knowledge very confined in distribution.  

And now, admiring the jaunty, tropical looking character laying peacefully in my palm, it occurs to me that this is almost certainly the very first pumpkinseed my Lucky Strike has landed in a career spanning several decades. As I put my little slip of Americana back into the water I look along the bank to see Jack bringing one in, and shortly after Dr Redfin has joined the Pumpkinseed Club too. The sun keeps shining and the bites keep coming and we retain a little shoal of the fish for a short while in Jack’s submerged landing net, because they will make a pretty picture. Just as perch here at home are often an anglers first fish of fishes, I have no doubt that from South Carolina to Iowa and Washington through Georgia, the pumpkinseed has been the start of many a young angler’s dreams. Perhaps they would laugh at our enthusiasm, but here in the land of the teapot they are like little cosmic unicorns.

Writing & Images – David West Beale, April 2024