FACTORALY - E30 FISHING

Episode Date: March 21, 2024

Fishing, or rather, angling, is still the UK's most popular pastime. We'll look at fishing techniques - including the weird world of Catfishing (no, not that catfishing) - and lures. from vast collections to the vastly expensive million dollar one. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello. Hello. Who are you? Me, I'm Simon Wells, voiceover extraordinaire. Who are you? I'm not Simon Wells. I am voiceover extraordinaire, but I'm not Simon Wells. I'm Bruce Fielding. Hello. Oh, you're that voiceover extraordinaire. That one, yeah. Marvellous. What are we doing here?

Well, at the moment, we are currently both sitting here in our little isolated recording booths with our beautiful silky voices. But on this particular occasion, we're not doing voiceover for the sake of voiceover. No, no, no. Oh, no. On this occasion, we are here to present another fascinating, fun episode of Factorily. So, Simon, what should we tell the listeners about what Factorily is? The Factorilites. The Factorilites. I love that expression. I've had two or three people come up to me and go, I'm a factorialite. Oh, brilliant. Oh, it's spreading. It's beginning to spread.

It is. Congratulations. So for those who are not yet factorialites, this is a weekly podcast with two English voiceover artists who happen to really love facts, random, useless trivia. Oh, yeah. We pick a subject each week, which on the face of it may seem quite mundane and void of interestingness, but you scratch under the surface and it turns out there's an awful

lot of interesting facts to be had. So Bruce and I sit here and we chat for half an hour or so about the subject. And all of you lot, you get to listen. And learn and have dinner dinner party conversation and things to impress your friends with but you've got the kind of friends who will also be listening to it so actually it'll be fine yes quite exactly so so every week we take a subject this week uh what's the subject this week simon well this week we've um we've gone for fishing we've gone we've gone fishing. We've gone fishing.

There's a sign upon our door. It's a big subject, fishing, though, isn't it? It is, yes. This seems to be happening quite a lot recently. We pick something that seems quite niche and concise, and you start poking at it, and goodness me, there's hours and hours and hours of material, and it's our job to try and cut it down a little bit.

Well, I guess the reason there's so much about it is that I think it's still the most popular pastime in the UK. It seems to be it seems to be. Tell you what let's start off with that. Is it a pastime that you yourself enjoy? No although I have been to Scotland and I can what they call spay cast. You can spay cast? I can spay cast. I don't know if they call um spay cast you can spay cast i can spay cast i don't know if you know what spay casting is i don't please tell me um when you normally cast a lure you kind of flick it behind you and then forward yes on the spay there's trees behind you so you can't flick it behind you because you'll get you'll get caught up in the trees oh um so this is kind of like a figure of eight that you do in front of you. Yes, okay. To get things out, and then you flick it. And you get where you want to be.

Yeah, but in a different way. The only thing, I'm a very accurate spadecaster. Are you? I've never done it in a river. Okay. The only reason I know, because I can get it exactly into the middle of the rubber tire in the playground that we've basically been practicing in. How wonderful. Isn't that great?

So you go to Scotland, you go to a park, they give you a rod, and you basically spay cast into a rubber tire. That's brilliant. And I can do that every time. Congratulations. The ghillie was very impressed. Now all you need to do is actually do it in a river and get some fish. And try and get some fish. Yeah, I have never.

My dad never fished. I never fished. Yeah. I have no idea what it's like to handle a live fish. Exactly the same here. I have never had any fisher type people around me. I've never been inclined to go fishing. I eat fish.

I think fish is delicious. I think fish as an animal are quite interesting. Oh, fabulous. Yeah, they're great. But yeah, fishing is something that has passed me by. Yeah, well, so we're both going at this from the point of view as the amateur who likes fish, but not fishing. Yes, we're coming at this as complete and utter novices.

So to that end, we won't claim to know anything. Anything we talk about today is from recent research. And what we'll expect is people to, I mean, apart from giving us a five-star review, to leave comments to say, you've got that completely wrong. That's not what it is at all. Absolutely. Yeah. And we're very happy to have those, by the way. Certainly. We're on a progress of learning just as much as anyone else if you

would like to correct us if you would like to um give us additional information please do definitely we're open so let's start off simon you're very good with the etymologies and the origins of things. What about the etymology and origin? Right, so fishing, I mean, I'm not even going to bother doing etymology on fishing. It's fish with ing at the end, isn't it, really? Fishing is the art of or the process of catching fish either for consumption or just for leisure um and therefore it it encompasses an awful lot of different activities so you might say to someone fishing and they picture the leisure activity standing near a river with a rod catching fish is that is that more sort of accurately angling?

That is more to do with angling. Right, so angling I do know a bit of etymology for. Angling, the word angle, as we would think of an angle, such as a triangle or whatever, is a Proto-Indo-European word, which I love just for that title. And it means a bend or a hook or an angle, as we would imagine it. And therefore, the hook that you use in fishing has an angle on it, and therefore it's angling. That makes total sense.

Doesn't it just? Yeah. That's also where we get the word ankle, because the ankle is that sort of right angle thing. Yes, of course. So that's also where we get the word ankle because the ankle oh that's sort of that's that's a right angle angle as well yes of course so that's useful but yes you say fishing to any different group of people and they'll picture different things one person might might picture angling the the sport yeah you go to a fishing village and say fishing and someone will instantly think well i'm i'm going out in a boat with a huge net and i'm catching hundreds of fish to sell because i'm a fisherman and that's fishing um so there are different sides to it there is there is the industry of it and there is the leisure of it um so hopefully we'll get to pick a little bit out

of each and um and see what what do you instantly think when you hear the word fishing? I think of being completely bored stiff down by a riverside. Brilliant. With your rod dangling in the water. Yes. And sort of just watching the river go by and seeing your enemies float by. Your enemies, that's great. And not catching anything and going home via a fishmonger. Fine. Okay, good. Good.

What do you see? Much the same. I love the idea of it. I love the tranquility of it. I live near the River Thames, and there are quite a few little tributaries and offshoots around here. You go for a nice walk down a little backwater, and you inevitably see someone sitting there all peaceful and calm with their their equipment and their gear and their little

tent and their tackle and and i can kind of see the appeal of it i can kind of see you know you a zen-like thing very zen-like and the equipment i do know a couple of people who are keen fishermen and they you know they they're always looking out for new equipment they do know a couple of people who are keen fishermen and they you know they they're always looking out for new equipment they do like their kits don't they love a bit of kit that that side of it fascinates me um but the actual practice of sitting for a long time often in the rain often not actually being able to catch anything yeah it doesn't really appeal to me no sorry no sorry me neither however those who do angle or fish um i have great respect for because i can admire their patience and the meditative meditative the way they think yeah absolutely it does look nice i just don't want to do it so if we take fishing to its basic function which is to say people have always

caught fish in order to eat fish um and at its very basis before it ever became a sport or a leisure activity that's what fishing was for yes exactly um mankind has been doing this for quite a long time there have been uh fossils of fish found that was a lot of f's fossils of fish found far away from the sea uh inland and these fossils date back to about 500 000 years ago okay so people have been catching fish for consumption for a very, very long time. In terms of equipment and how they did that, an archaeological dig in East Timor, which is sort of somewhere between Australia and Asia, they found fishing hooks made of bits of shell, which are somewhere between 15, 25 000 years old so people have been actively fishing sea fishing with proper equipment for at least that long right and yeah at its basis that's what

it is you catch a fish you eat a fish you go back you catch more fish um presumably somewhere along along the lines someone has said do you know what? This is actually good fun. I might just do this for lols, regardless of actually eating the fish. Yes, because nowadays you can't really eat the fish, can you? You have to sort of throw them back. Yes, that's a part of fishing

that I don't quite get. Me neither. But then, you know, in the UK, 4 million people do it quite regularly. 4 million, really? 4 million people. That's a lot of fishers, isn't it? It is million really four million people that's a lot

of fishers isn't it it is huge i've read that um in america obviously there's a lot more people who fish because there are just a lot more people but in america they spend 7.5 billion dollars a year on fishing equipment yeah it's a big thing it's a great big hobby. We apparently spend up to about £3 billion a year in this country. Oh, really? Oh, okay. So we are. So per capita, we are actually far more into it. Actually, much more into it, yeah.

Interesting. There's been some research into the health benefits. The meditative state. That one. Is that one of your words that you have trouble with? Meditative, yes. I have issues with digital. Digital.

Digital. Okay. Makes me sound drunk. Okay. So the meditative bits, hey! Hey! Or fishing is quite interesting. There's been some research.

I mean, obviously, it promotes physical health through schlepping all the stuff down to the river. It gives you sort of resistance and stamina. And it also improves mental well-being. It's very good for your mental health. It reduces stress, encourages social bonding because you talk to other fishermen about what they haven't caught.

And there's research that says, and this is weird, that it's the second most relaxing in the UK's top 20 hobbies being only by knitting. Knitting? Yes. Knitting is the most

relaxing hobby in the UK. Yes it is. And then it's fishing and then fishing i do you know what coming from the point of view of someone who does neither i would imagine that both of those would really stress me out to some extent or other i can't picture either of those being relaxing but then that's because i don't know how to do them quite i can knit actually can you i can so i need somebody to cast on and cast off. I can do the middle bit. Okay, great.

Yeah. Maybe we'll do an episode about knitting one day. Oh, yeah, we could do knitting, couldn't we? You don't have to catch fish with a hook or line. You can catch fish in all sorts of other ways as well. Okay, such as? Well, you can go catfishing. And I don't mean the modern uses.

That's different, isn't it? I mean the way you used to catch catfish. Oh, I see. Right. And the way you catch catfish is by making yourself the bait. Okay. So what you do is you basically hold your hand under the water where there are catfish. And you make your hand alluring by putting some food in it or whatever.

And the catfish swallows your hand and keeps swallowing you up until about your elbow. And then you pull your hand up with a catfish attached. And that's how you catch catfish. I'm not certain whether to be intrigued or grossed out. I will put video in the show notes which shows you how to catch a catfish.

That's very interesting. It's very strange. It's called noodling. And in some states noodling has been banned. But Native Americans were doing it long before the Europeans showed up. It's still a folk tradition along the Mississippi. Oh, is it?

But it is illegal in quite a lot of places now. Huh. Another thing you could do that doesn't require you to have lots of kit is tickling. I mean, I'm a great fan of tickling myself. I am very ticklish. Okay. Are you ticklish? I'm not at all i'm a really

disappointing person to try and tickle so trout and salmon tickling i've heard of trout tickling yeah so trout tickling what you do is you walk up to the trout very slowly yes you stick your hand in the water and you give the trout a little tickle on the belly right and what what happens is that the trout goes into kind of a trance it kind of goes oh that's nice i really like that in the trout boys and um it uh it kind of just it relaxes so much that you can just pick it up wow and just pick it out the water um it's mentioned in shakespeare uh how is it trout tickling you can use it for salmon as well right um and you don't need any equipment and unfortunately you know i said that um noodling uh for catfish is illegal so is so is trout tickling why i don't understand this it

seems like the most natural way of doing of fishing i reckon that big angling has got uh the mps sort of sorted out so that there are no laws that come in that stop people from buying more kit right and so so if you don't have to buy kit it therefore is illegal pure supposition folks yeah yeah yeah i mean and and one other way um you can also tramp on a flounder fl Flounder tramping is quite popular in Scotland. And there's even a tournament in Scotland, the World Flounder Tramping Championships. Really? Yeah. So you wade through shallow, muddy water until you see a flounder.

And then you stand on it. That's it. You don't have to stamp to do it harm. You just basically stand on it to hold it where it is I mean technically you could then pick it out of the water and eat it but in sports flounder tramping you would just stand on it the judge would come over and go

yes you've tramped on a flounder and then move on to the next one well how fascinating then there are things like spearfishing Well, how fascinating. Then there are things like spearfishing and all that sort of stuff. Going ice fishing. I had a little look at ice fishing. And, you know, you go out onto a big frozen lake with a little tent.

You sort of pull a tent out there. They're called ice shanties or ice shacks, just to give you a little bit of shelter from the wind. You get your ice saw or your ice auger, and you make a hole in the ice. And yeah, you can sit there and fish with a pole and line, or you can stand there with a spear. And these fishing spears are quite lethal looking things they've sort of got several barbs uh on the end of the spear and you

just stand there completely stock still yeah often in the dark i haven't found out why i don't know whether the type of fish that you're going after don't like daylight or i don't know maybe it's to get yourself into the right frame of mind um but yeah you stand there until a fish wanders past and you chuck your spear into the hole in the ice and um ta-da there's wow there's a fish supposing the fish is bigger than the hole yes i suppose you would have to know what you're going for and what size of hole you need to create yes quite another type of fishing i've known about this for a while but i've never really looked into it cormorant fishing and oh i've heard about this this is in china in china yeah so they they used to do it in china and japan and this used to be the main way that they fished for centuries and

centuries um now it's very niche it's very artisan they do it in south southwest china i think and um they sort of do it as a as an example of old-fashioned methods and it's quite good for tourism and i only first discovered this because i was reading a script for voiceover work a while ago for a company in china and it was talking about different traditions and cultures and it mentioned cormorant fishing and um a person goes out in a a wooden fishing boat and they have a perch on the front of the boat, which a cormorant sits upon. And the cormorant dives into the water and catches the fish and brings it back out and drops it in the boat. And the fisher people, I'm never quite sure, are we saying fishermen these days?

Is that too sexist? Fisherfolk? The person doing the fishing um they they sort of train these cormorants from from their youth to do this and um yeah the cormorant dives into the water and picks out the fish and i'd always wondered what stops the cormorant eating the fish yes does it just know that it gets a nice big healthy lunch at the end of the day and therefore it doesn't eat it themselves that's what i would do what they actually do is they put um a collar around the bird's neck not a tight one a loose fitting collar so it doesn't do the bird any harm

in any way um but when a cormorant swallows a fish it can swallow fish that are sort of two or three times the size of its throat and they just sort of gulp it down because their throat expands so you put a leather or a metal collar around the bird's neck just the right diameter to stop the large fish going down so it doesn't hurt the bird at all it just practically means that it can't get the larger fish down its throat it can eat the smaller ones so that it's not hungry yeah but the larger ones it doesn't get down it yaks it back up onto the deck of the boat and the fisher person takes the fish away ta-da there you go interesting um another another method i discovered is um kite fishing i didn't know this was a thing kite i mean i i love kites you do don't you't you? I'm passionate about kites. I knew that, yeah. But kite fishing I've never heard of.

You can go fishing with a kite. So you get either from the shore or from a boat, you get a kite. It's a specific type of kite. You can't just use any old kite. But you get this kite on the end of a line, quite a long line, sort of 60 feet or so of line. The kite goes up into the air and then it has drop lines one two maybe three drop lines suspended from the line of the kite and these drop lines go vertically down into the water with a lure on the end and it means that you can cast over a further distance so either you tether the the kite string to the shore in which case you can go further out into the water than

you would with just a fishing rod. Or if you're on a boat, sea fishing, you can cast the kite back towards shore and therefore get into the shallower waters that you wouldn't be able to get into with the boat. That makes sense. So these drop lines go down, they have a bob on the end that sort of floats on the water. When the fish takes a bite, the the end that sort of you know floats on the water when the fish takes a bite the kite plummets and you reel the whole thing back in wow okay kite fishing never realized yeah you're ever gonna do that nope i'm never gonna do that nope i'm never gonna try it but it's interesting to have a look there are there are videos and photos online and it looks quite fascinating. You mentioned lures there. I mean, one of the things about fly fishing

is that people love tying different sorts of lures. There are so many different kinds of lures that people have experimented with to see which works best, like made up of little bits of feather, little bits of shiny thing and all sorts of stuff.

And somebody once decided that for a giggle, they would make a million-dollar lure. Okay. Which was encrusted with gold and diamonds. Oh, my goodness. And he insured it for a million dollars. Wow. Just in case he lost it, just in case it ended up in a fish.

Yeah, just in case a fish accidentally swallowed it. Yes, exactly. And he couldn't case it ended up in a fish. Just in case a fish accidentally swallowed it. Yes, exactly. And he couldn't get it back out of the fish. But it didn't actually work at all. Oh, no. The thing was like gold and platinum and diamonds. Turns out fish don't have a taste for gold and platinum and diamonds. No, apparently not.

Apparently not. Wonderful. And fly fishing is so cool because the things that you attach as the lure resemble flies. Yes, that's right. So you can actually go after a particular fish by virtue of what lure you're using. What kind of flies they eat. Yes, exactly that. Okay.

Yeah. People have boxes of flies, don't they? They have flies as like some decoration on their walls and things. Yes. I can picture many an English country pub that has a box of fishing flies and hooks adorning the the wall there's um a complete side story here talking about fishing equipment adorning the walls of pubs um there's a a book called three men in a boat by jerome k jerome which i read a little while ago and these three chaps are on a trip up the river thames they go into a pub they see this beautiful

stuffed fish in a case on the wall and they ask ask a man at the bar, who caught that? And he said, oh, I caught it with my trusty old rod. He leaves. Someone else comes in and says, no, no, I caught that with just a stick and a bit of twine. He leaves. Someone else comes in and says, oh, no, I caught that with my bare hands. And these three chaps, they take a closer look at the fish and it falls off the wall and it shatters into a thousand pieces and it was made of plaster of paris so every everyone was lying yeah like lying being part of fishing it was this big exactly exactly and everyone knows exactly what gesture i just made with my hands even they do an audio podcast they do absolutely they've been records of people fly fishing for quite a long time i mean there's references back in the second century to fly fishing really that long ago it's it's quite a it's quite long yes well around the 16th century in eng, this sport really sort of seemed to take off quite a lot as a leisure activity.

They started making stronger rods and stronger lines. Before spools came about, people used to wade out with a stick and the line was just wrapped around the stick that they sort of held by their side as well as the rod. It wasn't until quite a lot later that you sort of first get the idea of winding your your line in on a spool there's a technique to it apparently which i have no idea about well one step at a time bruce you know you've you've mastered the tire thing i can catch tires actually talking of catching tires a lot of strange things are caught by fishermen. That was an enjoyable segue. Well done. I mean, people generally catch sort of bits of metal and things. Where I live is near Regent's Canal.

And you get quite a lot of fisher folk down there having a bit of a fish. But you also get magnet fishers. Right. People who use magnets to go fishing. Okay. And they use these very, very high-powered magnets. You often see piles of metal by the side of the canal. Oh, okay. And that's from magnet fishers who have gone to try and see what they can find under the water.

So they come up with guns, bicycles. Shopping trolleys. Yeah. Shopping trolleys. Yeah, definitely shopping trolleys. But it's just money. There's loads and loads and loads of things that come out through magnet fishers. How interesting. That sounds like the modern day mudlarking. Yeah, they can also occasionally find a safe.

Okay. There's a guy in Rochdale um who was fishing on the rochdale canal in manchester um who who pulled up a safe full of stolen money and there was no claimants for it and there were thousands and thousands of pounds in it and he donated it to the rochdale canal society oh Oh, how fitting. I know, I know. I think that's good. Now, I just want to know the backstory. Who has gone and stolen a safe, carted it half the way home, and then gone,

you know what, let's chuck it in the canal. The scenario that hits my head is that they were being chased by the Rossers, and they were on a bridge, and there was like Rossers on one side of them, Rossers on the other side of them. Let's get rid of the evidence.

Right, okay, yes. And just chucked it over into the canal. We'll come back for it later. It's not going anywhere. There are all sorts of superstitions about fishing. Oh, are there? So, for example, you never allow a dog stand near your fishing equipment. Okay.

On the other hand, cats, especially black cats, good luck. So you can let cats walk all over your rod and line and stuff. Even though cats are more likely to half inch your fish? Yes. The theory is you won't catch any fish if you take your fishing rods into the house just before you go fishing. Okay. Don't know why that is. Right.

If you go fishing by boat um never look back once you've cast off that's bad luck okay um never take a banana with you a banana why not well because bananas spoil quite quickly and so boats transporting them for trade purposes had to move quickly and fast boats aren't good for fishing so it may be that um bananas attract terrible pests as they decompose. And when they start to turn bad, bananas release ethylene gas, which some people believe drives the fish away. Oh, I see.

So bananas are bad news on a boat. Okay, so that's a fairly reasonable practice. I think so. Not just a superstition. Yeah. Huh. I heard also that it's bad luck to go out fishing on a boat with no name. I went through a canal on a boat with no name.

I went through a canal on a boat with no name. Was it good to get out of the rain? Oh, that's going to be a very, very few handful of people who get that. They will get that. Of course, our listeners will definitely get that. Wonderful. But even that in itself, I suppose, makes sense. If you went out on an unidentified, unmarked, unnamed boat,

if you did get lost out at sea, it would be harder to find you. So again, that may be a superstition, but it kind of makes reasonable sense. A lot of these superstitions kind of make some sort of sense at some point. It's like walking under ladders. If somebody drops something off a ladder, you're going to get hurt. Yes, that's just rational. Yes. going to get hurt yes that's just rational yes did you come across the biggest fish ever caught oh i love it when this happens invariably when when either of us go and find the definitive answer to what is the world's biggest heaviest longest whatever we come up with completely different answers um i have an answer do you have an answer i do have

an answer i'll tell you what after three do you want the weight should we do the weight of the biggest fish sure okay are you ready i'm ready on a count of three yes one two three two thousand £1,664. Yes, we researched the same thing. Now, this was a great white shark. Yep. So, yeah, this was back in 1959 in Australia. Yes. There's a bloke called Alfred Dean. Yeah.

Who caught this shark. And he was rather proud of it. I'm not surprised. I mean, you'd be quite impressed, wouldn't you? And there are photos. I started to go down this, what is the biggest fish ever caught train of thought. And other than that,

which is definitively the heaviest fish ever pulled in, there are actually world records per fish. So rather than just saying, what's the biggest fish? You have a world record for the biggest marlin, the biggest tuna, the biggest ever what's the biggest fish yeah you have a world record for the biggest marlin the biggest tuna the biggest ever this the biggest ever that um i found a website wonderful website called field and stream.com oh nice um which has the top 10 biggest fish ever caught and these photos are just phenomenal i'm looking at one right now, the world record for the biggest bluefin tuna, 1,496 pounds,

caught in 1979 by a fellow called Ken Fraser in Nova Scotia. And it just doesn't even look like a fish. It's a monster. It's twice as long as the man standing next to it. It's just ridiculous. I think that's five times as heavy as I am. It's a big tuna, isn't it? I mean, either I don't comprehend how large tuna are,

or that is a ridiculously large tuna. Tuna are very big. So you'll be able to see that in the show notes at factorily.com. Indeed you will. This is just the tip of the iceberg. Hearing us mention these few facts is only a little gateway to all of the things that you will find in our notes. Yeah sorry about that. Now whilst we're on the the subject of records I was I was having a look at

lures and seeing the different collections that people have of lures and the official Guinness World Record for the largest fishing lure collection goes to a young boy called Spike Yoakam, who lives in Illinois. And in 2016, he and his family got Guinness round to have a look at his collection because they suspected it might be quite big. The previous record was a gentleman who had about one and a half thousand lures in a collection which is quite good that's quite a lot um the yokem family had a bit of a tally and realized that their son had collected

over three and a half thousand lures where was he keeping them all they had to build an extension bruce they actually had to build an extension on their house to display these lures wow they're all in these great big cabinets there's a again go on the show notes there's a wonderful youtube video of this chap um actually having guinness come around and count all of his 3563 fishing lures um they're fascinating uh they reckon that his, I'm surprised it's not more than this actually, but the collection is worth about $12,000. Yeah. That's 3,500 lures.

That's only four bucks a lure. That's not as much as I would have expected. But yeah, he's got the biggest collection of fishing lures in the world. Amazing. I don't have any more facts. I don't have any more facts. I don't have any more facts. We've been angling for facts. We've been hooked on the subject.

And we've sunk. We've cast our nets far and wide to bring in as big a haul of facts as we possibly could. And we've reeled them in. Some of the facts are a little bit fishy. Ah, dear. Well, look, thank you very much for listening all the way to the end. We do appreciate that.

And if you'd like to hear more, then you can subscribe on your podcast player. You can like and tell your friends. Do all of the above. Five-star reviews, please. Absolutely. So that's that then. That's the end of another episode of Factorally.

Thank you all for coming. Please come again next time until then goodbye goodbye