The barbel records of the 1960s - Keith Arthur
While not quite ten-a-penny, it is fair to say that 16lb barbel turn very few heads these days. Sixty years ago it was very different.
The record – or, rather, records as there were three matching fish – was 14lb 6oz, and hadn’t been beaten since the first of this trio was captured from Molesey Weir on the Thames in Victorian times, only equalled.
When the late Colonel Crow announced in 1960 that a salmon angler, a Mr Cassell, had taken a 16lb 1oz barbel from The Bridge Pool at Ibsley, on the Hampshire Avon, the news turned a lot of heads.
16lb 1oz Hampshire Avon barbel
Remember that back in the 1960s the Avon was still largely a salmon river with some beats exclusively reserved for salmon anglers until their season ended in, I think, October.
The most famous stretch, the Royalty, could be fished for coarse fish alongside salmon anglers but the best pools, such as the Parlour, were priced in a way that deterred maggot-drowners. Maggots were even banned there for quite a time.
The Royalty was the haunt of the great specimen anglers of their day. FWK Wallis was one of those barbel record-holders who caught his 14-pounder from the Royalty in 1937. He invented the ‘Wallis Cast’ for the centrepin, where the line between reel and butt ring was pulled as the float was cast to make the reel spin.
Using that technique, and suitably large floats, he was able to cast to the far bank of the Avon, probably using the Wallis Wizard rod.
I recall my fishing buddy at the time bought one. It was 11ft long, with a whole cane butt section and split-cane middle and tip. The cork handle was short, making it easier to use the eponymous cast.
I fished the Royalty a few times in the 1960s...when maggots were allowed...and what a stretch of river it was then, and still is now.
What a stretch of river the Royalty still is
"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…
‘What I wish I’d known at 20’ - Adam Rooney
Hindsight is a wonderful thing, so for this series, we asked some of angling’s stars what nuggets of wisdom they would share with their 20 year-old selves and why. It makes interesting reading...
Adam Rooney - former starlets ace and boss of guru tackle
“When I look back at my fishing at the age of 20, there were clearly things that I should have done differently. One of my biggest flaws was setting up too much gear and this often made me late for the start of contests.
“I’d regularly fish the White Acres festivals with top anglers such as Richie Hull and Gaz Stanley and although I experienced success there, I would certainly have a lot more rods and top kits out than pretty much anyone else!
“It all boiled down to a lack of confidence in certain areas on my attack, but I now know that you need to focus on a select few methods that you feel that you’ve mastered. If you stick to your guns with these, they tend to work more times than they fail. One of the best ways to realise what your faults are is to surround yourself with anglers who are proven winners.
“Fishing with Richie taught me so much. I’d take time out from actually fishing and sit behind him, taking note of every little detail. He was the best by a mile at commercial meat fishing and by quizzing him almost constantly I managed to master the tactic.
“It’s so tempting to rush to the lakeside and start fishing as quickly as you can but if there are local experts on site, take a little time to have a chat with them. There’s no doubt that small amount of time will make a massive difference to the amount you catch when you finally wet a line.”
Starlets were quick to recognise the talent of a young Adam Rooney.
The trophy that put Adam on the road to big-time match fishing success.
‘What I wish I’d known at 20’ - Rich Wilby
Hindsight is a wonderful thing, so for this series we asked some of angling’s stars what nuggets of wisdom they would share with their 20 year-old selves and why. It makes interesting reading...
Rich Wilby - 2020 Drennan Cup Winner
“I’d say enjoy every moment spent on the bank and do not become obsessed with just catching. The fish will eventually come along, so don’t worry about blanking because that’s all part of specimen angling.
“Back in 1999 I was a broke art student at Staffordshire University. I only had my spinning rod with me at uni because I shared a tiny house, but I’d fish as much as I could every time I returned home to Norfolk in between terms.
“I would fish for all manner of species on local gravel pits and ponds. In winter, though, I loved spending time on the River Waveney targeting pike.
“My good friend Paul and I would walk miles, leapfrogging along the river and catching nice fish. It was a good way to walk off all those Christmas and New Year party hangovers.
“If I could go back in time I would also tell myself to go on more short trips and make the effort to get out of bed earlier for first-light morning sessions – I still struggle with getting up before 6am!”
1999 20lb-plus River Waveney pike
2020 a 40lb Stillwater sturgeon
The first-ever carp broadcast, 1953 - Keith Arthur
These days, if a TV company said to a carp angler: “We need you to catch a fish live for our cameras” it would seem nigh-on impossible to fail.
Go back 60 or more years and it would be a very different tale. Then, carp were unbelievably scarce and considered by the average angler to be virtually uncatchable anyway.
None of that deterred the great Richard (Dick) Walker when the BBC said that they wanted to broadcast a carp being caught on the first night of the 1953 season… live for the radio!
No such thing as portable equipment was available then. Instead, it was a ‘radio car’ with microphones hard-wired to the swim, along with a presenter and Bernard Venables – one of the co-founders of Angling Times – as commentator.
Carp bait in those days was normally a chunk of boiled potato, which was considered too big for anything else to eat. And do you know what? Walker only went and did it, landing a 16lb fish – which would have been the equivalent of at least a mid-thirty now.
This was June 1953, the year after Walker had smashed the carp record with the 44lb fish that became known as Clarissa.
Dick Walker, as an engineer, developed rods for carp fishing; there were none before his time. Split cane salmon rods were about all the carper could hope for, but Walker developed specific (compound) tapers for the job in hand.
He also invented the test curve principle, measuring the amount of force needed to bend the rod through 90 degrees. From that, the correct breaking strain of line could be calculated. Nowadays this is all done by computer-aided design technology.
Similarly, the recording of the broadcast could all be done these days on a mobile phone...only with video, too. As for catching a 16lb carp...no serious carper worth his salt would bother with fish so small. You’d be better off asking a match angler to catch one on his pole!
