Gagging for It...

A few days ago I was offered a place in a syndicate controlling a nice water 'somewhere' in Warwickshire. This morning I declined the offer, respectfully acknowledging the glaring fact that I wasn't a suitable candidate. The reason was one of publicity, or rather the fact that I'd have to exercise a total lack of the same in order to retain my investment in terms of cash outlay, once in.

I would have lost that ticket the first trip out because this publicity ban is not only to do with sending off unvetted pictures and blatant reports to the weeklies but includes the novel clause 'NO BLOGGING' whatsoever, even if it were an account so heavily disguised that no one on God's earth could have fathomed where on God's earth I'd fished.

Of course if I'd agreed to exercise such constraint (and I choose that word over 'restraint' because one's a leash, the other a straightjacket) then any account from anywhere else requiring some level of ambiguity simply to protect, say, a favoured swim, would have to had to have been made so transparently idiotic that it was nigh impossible to believe that I'd not fished where I said I had, but so opaquely concrete in its veracity that the syndicate would truly believe I hadn't fished THERE instead and disguised the fact by transplanting fact and figure from one fishery to another.

In effect, the more secretive I had to be for my own purposes, the more scrutiny I'd be subject to under theirs...

This stricture would have worked out to be no mere publicity ban in my case, but a gag silencing my entire fishing efforts, because all less than forthright accounts would then come under the spotlight of suspicion where I'd be in danger of flouting one fishery's rule no matter where I actually fished and without requiring evidence that I didn't. I'd have been forced to be so outrageously explicit in all my accounts that I might as well draw a map, stick an x right on the very spot where fish were caught and publish that, just to avoid coming under fire.

You might imagine this country full of specimen anglers running here there and everywhere in pursuit of the largest fish of all that swim, but, the truth is that they comprise the very smallest section of British angling and number only in their hundreds, not the tens of thousands.

There aren't many who would care to bother 'guesting' the place unless it contained verified fish of truly extraordinary size because died-in-the-wool specimen anglers are not just determined where big fish are concerned, but incredibly lazy souls who do not get out of bed to hunt down ghosts and phantoms, myths, legends and fabulous rumours, but only in order to pursue hard fact. Not concerned with proving that big fish exist in a given place, but only with getting wind of the proof gained through the efforts or mistakes of others that they actually do, they're not the pioneering spirits they once were ...

Put it like this. If I were to catch a silver bream from the canal weighing a pound and a half this coming spring, they won't be occupying my swims, but if I catch one over two-pounds and report it fully — and I fearlessly and frankly would — then I'll be ecstatic having achieved that fish through years of toil and trouble, but after publication also expecting an influx who come not only impressed by my passing an arbitrarily significant weight threshold that has no other meaning than desirability to them — though rather different meanings to me — but because my accounts are trusted they'll know it's absolutely and incontrovertibly truly there to be caught without them having to work to earn it. And there's the rub...  

... Idler's Quest gets read.

Publishing the unvarnished truth is what makes this blog, any blog, tick... it is why it's successful, why they're all so successful... and exactly the reason why they're devoured so avidly. 

Varnish it, paint it over, or deal in ridiculous and unwarranted obfuscation, then I know from long experience they ain't worth a light to anyone. Who cares that I caught a big barbel? Who bothers I managed a huge roach? Who gives a damn about that clonking great chub from a secret stretch of river? Without the why and the wherefore of the catch well-reported and explained in sufficient detail, such trophies are baubles fit only for self-admiration but are of no use whatsoever, in any conceivable way, to anybody else. 

The syndicate are more than aware of that fact, in point of fact they indirectly demanded I pull a recent news post on pain of possible expulsion of someone already a member, something I agreed to only because there was no alternative for him, and grudgingly then, and that's why they're so cautious about what having their fishery read or even speculated about might mean to them, because they really haven't a clue what it could...

But I do have a clue. I know my stuff and through experience know exactly what it would mean down to the dotted 'i' and crossed 't's' in little.

Nowadays, if there's not very good reason to spend time on one water that 'might' hold what they want, then most anglers in almost every case choose to spend time on another where it 'certainly' does, and I haven't heard of anything hailing from theirs that would create so much as a back eddy of idle speculation in anyone's stream of consciousness, thus far...

Far better can be got elsewhere, on a day ticket, or even for free!

I won't miss the syndicate — never was much of a joiner. I'm really very happy not to be venturing upon such water in such a ship of folly with such treacherous undercurrents swirling about beneath me. 

Believe me, there's nothing so remarkable on offer there that I'm gagging for it...