Page 31 - Studio International - May 1974

fish in different places. I played football. I went
for trials with Forest, Villa and Shrewsbury and
played cricket trials with Leicestershire County
but never made the grade at any of them.
Fishing just seemed to come to me naturally.
The club angler and the open match angler:
it's two worlds. It's like putting an amateur
against a professional. You get some very very
good club anglers who could win matches on the
open circuit but they're satisfied to go with their
friends on club outings. In open matches there
are probably a hundred to a thousand anglers on
the river bank at one time. There's the
headquarters at all waters where you make the
official draw for your peg: the pegs are twenty
yards apart and every twenty or so yards there's
a permanent peg with a number on it. You put
your hand into a large bag, draw your number
out, and sit there for five hours if you fancy
fishing. After the five hours the officials come
and weigh you in. Every person pays so much
of fine quality. for his ticket at the start and so much for the
Wells left a stock of wine in Norway in 1939. 2 Ivan Marks: pool. A certain amount of the ticket money goes
On his return in 1946 the first words of to the Club, a certain amount gets paid out. The
Mathias were 'Mr Wells, I have got your wine!' fishing as a profession pool's usually one hundred percent pay out.
It had been buried. There's a set of scales every thirty pegs and the
His other interests included the collection prizes are given out. The bigger the match the
of Colonial stamps — his Cape St Vincent The following interview with Ivan Marks was larger the prize.
series, inspected and admired by King George V, conducted by the artist Rory McEwen, himself a People don't bother me. The only time I'd
was considered to be the finest in private keen fly fisherman, on the last day of the Coarse get bothered if I was in a competition now would
hands — and entomology. Unfortunately, he Fishing season. The interview was held on the bank be if they stood there with their shadows on the
dispersed most of his collection of moths and of the River Soar in Leicester, while Marks water. I could have them all under the bridge
butterflies many years ago. demonstrated some of his fishing techniques. Due to and they wouldn't bother me. But there: this is
Wells was endowed with a fantastic memory the miners' strike having cut fuel supplies, the the dangerous time. It's not actually that the
and could effortlessly quote, even in his latter power station upstream was not discharging hot fish can see you — they don't know it's a person —
years, the Odes of Horace and the whole of water into the river. For this reason no fish were but it is a shadow. They can pick out that there's
Paradise Lost. His sound judgement as an caught because the low temperature of the water something there that wasn't there a little while
investor enabled him to supplement his salary dissuaded them from feeding. Casters were used, before. That makes a shadow, the fish know,
and, later, a very small pension. He was thus one on a hook, and no groundbait. Ivan Marks is and when they know they're just not going to
able to gratify his tastes as a fisherman in one of the top match fishermen in Britain. feed. Most of the matches are worth £100 plus.
exclusive waters and as a connoisseur of wine. You only win, on a season, three or four. On a
He was at the same time most generous to his Twenty-six years ago I was probably one of the match of a hundred there'd probably be four
relatives and friends. biggest nuisances on the bank, larking about. prizes going 40%, 30%, 20%, io%. The pools
To the end of his life he preserved close ties And then about twenty years ago I was starting are optional so if a beginner comes along and he
with many of his old Eton pupils and to get a bit serious. People told me a lot of wants to go in the pools he can, but if he doesn't
colleagues and some of them would often visit things and everything started to knit in to make he needn't. It's an open house. It's the biggest
him at St John's Wood. His loyalty to the boys me the angler I am today. Nobody's ever gone sport in England — people don't realize it — and
of his house was profound and one of them fishing in my family at all. We used to own it's one of the sports where a novice can have a
recalls a touching incident on Armistice Day greyhounds and the person who used to train go at the big names of the country. In every
1918 when, as elsewhere, jubilation was the them was a keen angler, his name was other sport a novice can't. He can't play golf
prevailing mood. Wells strode through the Alan Coles (the lad who just won the National against Tony Jacklin, he can't ride against
house silencing the revellers and charging them two years ago, Phil Coles, that was his son and David Broome. In angling all you need is a rod,
to remember all boys who would never return. I've virtually done the same with him: I've a line, a hook and a bit of bait and you can have a
In more recent years one would meet him taken him everywhere with me and taught him go at the stars. The biggest prize I've won is the
every now and then in St James's Square on the things I know which is how it's gone on). HAS : it's a match run down in London by the
his way to or from his Club, a short square He took me fishing and since then I've just big gravel people on Leisure Sports. I won that
figure with penetrating blue eyes and white improved and improved. one year and it was worth £800 for a two-day
moustache, a black overcoat buttoned tightly I first got really serious seventeen or eighteen competition. The biggest match in the country,
to the neck in all seasons and surmounted by a years ago. Before then I was winning club moneywise, is the National Championship. You
black felt hat. Humble, modest, kind and matches — that's probably twenty or thirty on a could win up to £1,500—£1,800 with a thousand
tolerant, C. M. Wells would have been the last bus outing — and then after the Forces I started anglers fishing in it. The biggest match
to have foreseen how much and to how many competition fishing. I met Eddie Allen when I moneywise for English anglers is the Woodbine
in all walks of life his death would bring was winning club matches and he took me Challenge Match, which is usually fished in
grief. under his wing for seven or eight years. Eddie Denmark, and that's worth f2,000. Conditions
J. W. CHANCE taught me more about fish than anything else: are everything to an angler. Today if you said
where they would be liable to feed in a river; catch me 20lbs I'd say it's an impossibility. If
(Reprinted by kind permission of the Salmon and
Trout Magazine, from the issue of May 1964.) what periods of the year you'd catch different you came to me in the summer and asked me to
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