Mike Lockley: Fish fascinate me

Aug 8 2011 by Mike Lockley, Sunday Mercury

FISH fascinate me. For example, can you believe a single herring produces one million offspring? God knows how many the married ones churn out. Fishing, however, leaves me cold. Don’t those people who spend hours casting flies on still waters realise someone has invented dynamite? Do they realise how little a box of fish-fingers costs at Iceland?

I tried the sport once and realised there’s a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore like an idiot. Perhaps that’s why SkySport’s two day live coverage of an angling contest, ambitiously entitled Fish-O-Mania, wasn’t the white knuckle, adrenalin fuelled ride I’d hoped for.

I can find nothing entertaining about fishing on TV, but have no wish to denigrate those who do (for those people who do, denigrate means ‘to put down’).

It was fat northern blokes in a studio talking about fat northern blokes dangling their rods in a rain-lashed lake watched by a fan-base of fat northern blokes clutching Staffordshire bull terriers. If the ‘cream of British angling’ attract groupies, I didn’t see them, but, then, they may have been hiding in bulrushes.

As a spectacle, it’s missing something, including glamour, danger and excitement.

But I don’t think it should be dumped from our screens, just tweaked. Rather than catching carp at Cudmore Lake, Sky should try nude shark wrestling off the Great Barrier Reef. I’d be hooked.

The camera zeroed-in on one competitor munching a sandwich, cheese I think. “At this stage of the game,” whispered the fat northern bloke in the studio, “it’s important to re-fuel, to keep up energy levels. Make no mistake, those guys out there are feeling the strain now.’’ The sandwich-muncher then picked his nose on air.

“So what’s the secret of your success?” the winner was asked. “Yuf haf to kip yr wrms wm,” he mumbled. An awkward silence followed before the interviewer said: “Sorry, I don’t think the viewers caught that.” The victor spat in a bucket, cleared his throat and announced: “You have to keep your worms warm.”