A Piker's Progression by John Wilson
Ah this could be difficult…
Through the 1980’s John Watson was something of a hero to this (at the
time!) teenage Piker. This was due to his frequent appearances in the angling
press and his excellent work as PAC secretary.
I know his tenure was curtailed amidst a cloud but whatever the truth,
seldom has PAC been as visible or effective.
I first read JW’s “A Piker’s Progress” in the early nineties when I
found it in a local library, later I often wished I’d kept it and paid the
fine. I remember really enjoyable
anecdotal writing which at times came close to making me feel like I was in the
boat with ‘Watto’. An excellent read
that culminated on a real high with the authors capture of a huge Broadland
Pike. I later heard that the book was
ghost written by another renowned piker, I don’t know if this is true but
either way it doesn’t alter the fact that it was a seriously good fishing book. So when in 2009 the book was revamped as “A
Piker’s Progression” I made sure I grabbed a copy so I could revisit Watto’s
boat whenever I felt like it.
My first impressions of the new version were positive; I
found the story telling in the older section was as good as I remembered it but
I wasn’t so enamoured with the new section which was barely much more than a
list of the people JW fished with and what they caught. Another sixteen years have flashed by, Watto
has enjoyed another well deserved Broadland monster but he’s also been involved
in other more unsavoury events whilst on the water, one of which I described on
this page at the time as staggering hypocrisy.
I think it’s fair to say that when I recently re-read ‘Progression’ I
did so with a more critical mind.
I only intended to read the first, older part of the book as
I knew this to be full of great fishing tales featuring my own favourite
species, often set in places I know and love.
All of this is still there and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it once
more, no doubt I will again. It’s
impossible not to notice the text of this new version has been tweaked in
places which is fair enough but it did get me wondering whether all that
pompous self-aggrandising was present in the original text? JW is undoubtedly a very good Piker and in
the 1980’s was consistently ahead of the game but he does like to big himself up
and we could come away with the impression that he singlehandedly
revolutionised Norfolk Piking. It was
also difficult for me to ignore Watto’s highly flexible moral code; now I’m no
saint and I’ve done similar things to JW in the past but I won’t try to justify
my actions. The trick is to keep quiet
and don’t get caught, at the time JW couldn’t do either consistently. If other people’s moral codes flex in a
different direction we have no right to criticise but that doesn’t stop JW. The squabbling between the 1980’s Norfolk Pikers
was well known at the time too, there were a lot of big egos bouncing around,
happily in my experience this is a thing of the past, mostly. It’s easy to be critical but what I
absolutely won’t question is Watto’s honesty as an angler, his catches and the
published weights are what he says they are, which as far as an angler’s ethics
goes, is most important in my opinion. Despite my niggles, the first section of
‘Progression’ is a really good read and no Piker could fail to pick up inspiration
as well as some sound advice along the way.
I hadn’t planned to carry on reading but ended up going
through the new part of the book in no time at all because there isn’t much to
it really. This part was pretty much as
I remembered it, apart from a few passages the writing doesn’t come close to
capturing the attention and imagination in the same way as part one. On at least three occasions in this newer
text Watto criticises Piking practices that he himself previously revelled in,
as described by stories in part one.
Maybe he has reasons for these contradictions but if so, these are not
shared. I know my own days of night
fishing from a boat won’t go on forever but when I no longer have the
motivation, I won’t criticise those who do.
Incidentally this specialised form of Pike fishing has come on a long
way since Watto’s days of kipping in the bottom of a boat, trusting the clicker
on a multiplier to rouse him. There are
further inconsistencies in attitude around the subject of fishing the ‘out of
bounds’ areas which JW continued to do.
I sympathise with his opinion on the rights to fish tidal water but
whatever the legality the author still seems to want a rule for himself and
another for the rest of us. For him to
fish in these areas, discretely and quietly would as he says cause no harm to
man or beast but Watto doesn’t want anyone else benefitting from this
interpretation of Magna Carta. Inevitably
JW was caught in the act and implies this could only have been possible if
someone had grassed him up. When a
decade after this publication JW was on the receiving end of a ‘guesting
situation’ he really should have encouraged his boat partner to keep quiet if
he wanted to avoid being labelled a hypocrite.
What is highly ironic is the popularity of Broadland in
current times is very much down to the writing of John Watson and others of his
generation who decry the ‘state’ of modern Broadland Piking. We were inspired by the likes of Watson,
Harper, Belsten and Fickling just as they were inspired by Pye, Wright, Vincent
and Hancock. It’s the way of the Piking
world nowadays that a book like the original ‘Progress’ could not be written,
which is sad in a way.
But what do I know and who cares anyway? John Watson has passed the age of eighty now
and his legacy in this daft pastime of ours is secure. Few if any honest anglers can match his
record of big Broadland Pike and most of us will certainly have learned plenty
from his writing over the years. A great
deal of “Piker’s Progression” is as good as Piking writing gets but when Watto
gets on his high horse it waters things down and I never did like shandy. However, I know I’ll continue to read and
enjoy the good bits over and over. I
also know that in Norfolk nobody gives a fuck what you do until you catch a
couple.
Fifty Years a Fisherman by John Wilson
Another fishing autobiography from another John who
parachuted himself into the Norfolk fishing scene and went on to become
possibly the most famous British angler of all time? I enjoyed the early parts of this book; John
Wilson’s childhood fishing on local streams and on into early adulthood
travelling to East Anglia to fish for Roach.
With his career as a London hairdresser in the sixties and work aboard
in exotic climes JW would have us believe he was a bit of a shagger though
interestingly, in these tales he constantly refers to himself in the third
person as ‘Wilson’, almost as if he’s trying to disassociate himself from such
goings on. Wilson settled in Barbados for
a couple of years and the fishy description of this is excellent.
I also enjoyed reading about the author’s eventual settling
in Norfolk in the early seventies and the excellent river fishing that was
available at the time. There’s a little
bit of Broadland Pike fishing described too but disappointingly no mention of
Wilson’s Thurne thirty pounder, come on John FFS! After that, things tailed off a bit for me, a
lot of the fishing is brushed over quickly, without much description and the
thrill of the chase is not present. As a
prolific writer maybe he’s told these stories before elsewhere? The parts talking of Mahseer fishing in India
are pretty good though and JW’s love of the place and the fishing shines
through. When Wilson gets political I’m
in broad agreement too and I noticed him bemoaning the privatisation of the
water industry and the decline of our lowland rivers two decades before it
became fashionable. His description of
watching frolicking Otters at some foreign destination was highly ironic with
the benefit of hindsight.
As someone who for whom work is just a necessary evil I
wasn’t really interested in Wilson’s TV career and the behind the scenes stuff. I’m only interested in the fishy part and the
end result that appeared on our screens was very good although to be honest
JW’s giggling used to get on me tits.
But fair play to John Wilson, he was very good at what he done and was
driven enough to make a damn good living for himself. This allowed him fish himself around the
world and reside in a nice big house with a lake. The description of this lake build bored the
bollocks off me and the end result the type of fishery I avoid at all costs,
ghosties FFS! Most of the final chapter
(I think this bit was added ten years after the original text was published as
‘Forty years…’) deals with Wilson’s globe trotting fishing exploits. This is interesting enough but I couldn’t
help thinking it read like a travel brochure, the writing had something missing. There’s no attempt to disguise that JW liked
a drink but that was never a secret and apparently there are many tales
connected to this that didn’t make the book.
I’m always sceptical about autobiographical writing as I
think it is rare that any person can look at their own lives objectively,
although there are exceptions. What we
usually end up with is an interpretation of events from a single perspective
and the end result can often be inaccurate if not dishonest. That’s not to say I think either of these JW’s
are dishonest but I think one of them has edited out the bad bits and the other
should come with caveats. Both books are
similar in as much as when they are good, they are very good but both run out
of steam before the end.
