i dont know why i thought of this, but i think it'd be interesting to see if we catch more fish than our forefathers.

what i mean is, with our modern day "super tackle" (as my freind calls it), our modern fly patterns and our newest techniques, do we actually do any better than people did say 40 years ago?

i'd love to go to a place that keeps records from a long time ago such as lake vyrnwy in mid wales which has the record books from the first years (around 1900) til present, and see what the monthly catches were throughout the years.

i'm certainly not a numbers based fisherman, and i dont mind the odd blank day. i'm just curious to see if all of our modern tackle and methods really has made any difference. i'm sure trout dont care if you've got a £600 hardy rod, a porsche in the car park and all the latest gadgets. at the end of the day the trout likes the fly on the end of the leader and nothing else.

any thoughts?

i agree it would be interesting to know if the 'technology' makes a difference but seeing as fishing is more commercial these days it would be hard to make a comparison. If however you do find any interesting facts showing which era is most prolific then i'm sure other forum members would like to see your findings. Unless it shows that all the tackle tarts have been wasting there money lol

Our fore-fathers caught much more - not handicapped by outwardly 'inferior' tackle - they mostly fished when the fish fed.
Certainly the wild trout of their day didn't keep the office-hours ours now seem to prefer.

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Save the softmouth trout

I was fortunate to manage a Sea Trout/Salmon fishery for a number of years on the west coast of Ireland (Connemara).
The record book went back to around 1900 and had been kept up to date throughout the years.
I spent many a dark windy night during the winter thumbing through the pages.

They definately caught more. But the fishing boats/trawlers were not as sophisticated so they would. Interestingly the patterns of flies used in that area had hardly changed, all the usual traditional culprits.

I see no reason why modern kit would have made any difference. Not as fatiguing when out all day in a boat for sure, but can't imagine any other benefits really.

Speaking for the rivers I fish on, I would say there were a lot more trout in them than now.
Also, not as many fishermen tramping the banks.
I have seen records from the Red Lion Hotel at Armathwaite, now the Fox and Pheasant, back in the 60's.
My parents owned and ran it for many years, and some of the photos of salmon caught in those days, and the frequency, was remarkable.
We had good spring runs then, a thing of the past now.
I used to fish the Eden in the 60's and fish were definitely more plentiful in those days.
As for tackle, I can only say that having fished with my late fathers 9ft cane rod for a day, I am so pleased carbon rods are now in existence.
S.

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"A glint of sun has warmed the air,The flies will soon hatch out, To lure and tempt from their deep lair, The bonnie speckled trout." SKB tackle supporter. I love Furled Leaders.

The industrial revolution saw that many rivers became poluted, you'd think over the last two hundred years things have never been so good as they are now. It has even been reported that salmon roe have been found in the mersey in stockport and brown trout can also be caught. This was unheard even 20 years ago.

Our wild brown trout streams are a mere shadow of what they were even just 50 years ago.

A very good read is 'Orange Otter' by Christopher Knowles, a book that recounts the life of the legendary angler, the Reverend Edward Powell. In it there is an extract from Powell's fishing diary that records, for 1948, 1,230 trout and 109 grayling. These fish taken from small Shropshire border streams such as the Onny and the Corve.

In the same book there is a reference to an anonymous angler, quoted by George Agar Hansard, who, between April 1753 and July 1764, caught 47,120 trout, best season 9,272.

As a boy in Cornwall in the late 50's and early 60's I used to fish the Kennell River. At Ponsanooth or Stickingbridge you could look over the bridges and see phalanxes of trout, lined up in the stream, lots in the 10 to 12" with a few larger and many smaller. My mother still lives within casting range (on a good day!) of the river and when I looked over the bridge a month ago there wasn't a fish to be seen. There's a huge amount of effort going into the restoration of a number of our streams which is to be applauded and supported but I'm sure that the likes of the Rev' Powell and Dai Lewis of Tregaron would weep if they saw their streams today ... even though, to a large degree, it was their generation who were responsible for the accelerated decline.

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[I]"I still don't know why I fish or why other men fish, except that we like it and it makes us think and feel."[/I] Roderick L Haig-Brown

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