Bob's trademark white cap became a beacon to attract spectators - Keith Arthur
Bob Nudd MBE came to match fishing quite late in life, but it didn’t take him long to reach the very top.
The quietly-spoken man from deepest Essex was the first Southerner to be picked by Dick Clegg for England’s World Championship squad. I’ll never forget sitting next to Dick on the way back from the Killyhevlin section of Lough Erne on the ill-fated 1985 Sealink Classic, telling him he’d picked the wrong man for the 1984 Championships and how Steve Gardener or Dave Vincent would have been better bets. This was despite the fact that in 1983 Bob was part of an Essex County team that won the World Club Championship in Italy – and that sort of thing doesn’t happen often. Shows what I know!
Bob soon became an integral member of a great squad and in 1990 won the first of four World Championship individual gold medals. His trademark white cap became a beacon to attract spectators and there was always a big gallery behind his zone.
The highlight of his England career was winning double gold, team and individual, at Nottingham’s Holme Pierrepont rowing course in 1994. Although Bob’s forte is pole fishing, I was there to witness his skills with a long-range slider float.
The highlight of his England career was winning double gold, team and individual, at Nottingham’s Holme Pierrepont rowing course in 1994.
I was also there for Bob’s final individual win in 1999 on a roasting-hot canal in Toledo, Spain. The wait for the final Spanish angler to weigh in on Bob’s section was one of the tensest moments in angling I’ve ever known.
Bob still competes at the highest open match level, preferring the natural waters of the Fens near his home, and is now back in the England fold at ‘veteran’ (a term he despises! level, so his hoard of gold may not yet be complete.
Always happy to talk to the crowds, and free with his advice and knowledge, Bob is a legend, and his impact on the sport will endure for many years to come.
His England team mates applaud Bob’s victory.
For more fishing history, pick up Angling Times magazine every Tuesday and turn to Arthur’s Archive
Billy Lane, the wizard of floatfishing - Keith Arthur
The great Billy Lane never won the National, but he came close. When cash prizes were secondary to silverware, nobody had a trophy cabinet as well stocked as his.
Then in 1963 he became England’s first World Champ and that enhanced his reputation still more. There were no such things as feeders or catapults allowed, and Billy’s floatfishing skills made legering redundant.
Nobody had a trophy cabinet as well stocked as Billy Lane
The Missile – a huge loaded, bodied waggler, around long before the term waggler had been coined – helped anglers to fish the wide, deep, waters of the Fens, but the first of his inventions that I adopted was the Trent Trotter. Billy designed this float for very shallow areas of the river. It was basically an Avon float with the stem chopped off directly below the body. An eye was whipped on and the float was fished bottom only, with a bulk shot locking it in place, one No4 shot set at half-depth below the float and another set at double the depth ABOVE the float.
This was what we now call a back shot, and it dragged bottom, slowing the float down. On some Middle Thames winter roach swims, only 2ft deep, it was particularly deadly.
His seminal work on the subject, the Billy Lane Encyclopaedia of Float Fishing, was published in the 1970s and remains a go-to read.
His tackle shop in Coventry is still a haven for anglers, and the maggot farm he set up produces some of the finest bait in the country. Keeping the Lane tradition of winning big matches going, his grandson Tom famously won the 2015 RiverFest title on the River Wye in conditions that even the great man may have struggled to find a float for. Tom’s 4oz feeder did the trick and enabled a second-day performance that was more than enough to clinch the title.
Billy Lane in his shop
To read more fascinating fishing history, pick up Angling Times every Tuesday and turn to Arthur’s Archive
"There were so many roach you could have used them as a bridge to cross the river" - Keith Arthur
When Pete Burrell amassed 259lb-plus of roach during a match on the famous Sillees River, the weight beggared belief. In a five-hour match on this small river, part of the enormous Erne system, Pete caught 942 roach – yes, he counted them – at one stage catching 12 fish a minute!
Pete fished line-to-hand in a performance that took not only great strength and concentration but also wonderful technique. Every fish has to be caught and unhooked efficiently, rebaiting only when essential as even a couple of dead skins would be seized by ravenous redfins.
The Sillees is one of the waters flowing into the Erne that attracts spawning aggregations of roach and back in those days there were a lot of them! I was taken there one evening by the late Pete Ottewill, who knew as much about fishing the border counties between Ireland and Northern Ireland as anyone.
He took me to meet Oliver, a farmer, who explained that when the main run of roach swam to the stone weir by his farm, their numbers were sufficient to raise the water level enough to swim over the weir!
I fished for an hour that evening and had 42lb of roach. Bizarrely, the swim Burrell famously fished was occupied by a pike angler, livebaiting with a roach! Sadly, on the match the following day, three years after the Burrell catch, I drew too far downstream, away from the fish. I had 50lb in my net after 90 minutes before the bites dried up as the shoal swam through and I weighed in 72lb and won the section.
How ironic then that the Sillees was cursed by the medieval St Faber, making it “poor for fishing, good for drowning”. If Pete had fallen in on the saint’s day, I’m pretty sure he could have walked out on the backs of the roach.
Pete Burrell 259lb roach catch
“Their numbers were sufficient to raise the water level enough to swim over the weir!”
For more fishing history, pick up Angling Times every Tuesday and turn to Arthur’s Archive…