It’s not surprising that Chris Hughes of Fat Dog occasionally needs to get away from it all. Their gigs have a mad terror akin to being on a fairground ride run by a bug-eyed loon who hasn’t quite spiked the thing into the mud and dogshit of your local park, while fantastic debut album WOOF is a thrilling boshing together of off-its-nut rave bombast, a futuristic take on the KLF, the horny doof of Nitzer Ebb and much else besides. Needing to get away from this debauched chaos, Hughes recently sought the quiet contemplation of the riverbank and ocean’s shore as he returned to his childhood hobby of fishing. One of the biggest participatory sports in the country, angling is practiced in wildly different ways, from the carp lads who turn up on the banks of stocked ponds with tins of lager and a tent hoping for to land a 30lb fish with a name with Magic Maureen, to fly fishers wading up the fast-moving rivers of our mountains in search of trout and salmon, to riverbank rovers as keen on being in nature as they are fishing, and sea anglers keen to catch something for their pot. This isn’t just about pitting yourself against nature in an attempt to connect with our primitive hunting instincts, however, but can be fantastic exercise and, as a recent survey found, great for your mental health. Hughes isn’t the only musician to be a keen angler – Feargal Sharkey’s campaign for cleaner rivers and beaches was born from his despair at what was happening to the waters he fished, Iron Maiden’s Adrian Smith wrote a book about it, and even Adele has been known to wet a line. Chris Hughes explains what has led him to join this illustrious pop and rock club.
My first fish was both terrifying and a joy.
I remember the first moment I put a rod in the water. I was about three-years-old, at a cabin in Canada. My uncle keeps a few fishing rods under a tree; I grabbed one and clumsily cast it into the water under a nice rocky overhang. In about three seconds I caught a bass. As soon as I saw the fish as I pulled it out of the water I was absolutely terrified and started screaming. My dad came out thinking I was drowning, but when he saw the fish he was kind of jealous – ‘what’s up with that kid? How’s he managed to do this?’
Size doesn’t matter.
My first fish I remember as being maybe just under the length of my arm. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a photo of me, but I’m a very lanky individual, so I remember it being massive. Maybe I’m exaggerating. It was probably absolutely titchy, but that doesn’t really matter – at least it doesn’t to me. One of the main pitfalls of fishing is people think that they’ve got to be catching massive fish and get very excited – ‘that could have bitten my arm off’ – but it doesn’t have to be a measuring contest.
Fishing is a lot like gambling.
I love ice hockey and I gamble on it whenever I can. Fishing is a healthy version of gambling where you could do it for hours without any guarantees of success and still consider it satisfying.
Sometimes fishing is about everything except catching a fish.
And that’s the appeal of it to me. There are more days when I’ve come home empty-handed then when I’ve caught something. I find those days just as satisfying as the days when I do catch. That’s the thing that keeps me coming back.
Being in nature is as important as the sport.
…even if it’s just fishing off of a pier and looking at the massive ocean. Part of the reason I love sea angling so much is you really don’t fully know what’s in there. The mystery of looking out to the horizon, especially in the early evening when you’re waiting for the sun to set, is quite incredible. Sometimes it’ll be so dark that you can hear the ocean but you can’t see it, like you’re standing over some deep void. You get this feeling of eternity.
Other anglers don’t always want to help you.
Every single time I’ve been in a tackle shop it’s a similar story: ‘There’s no good fish around these parts any more’. Really? Because I just saw a bloke catch some codling. They don’t really want you to go fishing because they want to go fishing.
When it comes to your tackle, simplicity is best.
Carp fishermen often turn up with a tonne of gear, but I can have a good time with basic lures or a simple float rig, especially recently as I’ve had a sad time with my family. My grandmother passed away, and I found that I’ve been drawn more towards a float rig because I think it’s a good opportunity for me to have a chance to reflect on my life.
Fishing is a meditative practice.
Being able to catch my own food has always appealed to me.
British waters are incredibly fruitful but we don’t eat nearly as much as we catch because our country doesn’t really have a taste for seafood in the same way that the rest of Europe does. It makes me sad.
Just as with tackle, the most basic ways of cooking your fish are often the best.
There’s a really nice, simple way I learned recently of making smoked mackerel. You get an empty Celebrations tin and fill it with wood chips for smoking, then put some chicken wire over that, get your filleted mackerel, season it up, put that on top of the chicken wire and then close the lid. You put the tin on an open fire and the indirect heat causes all the chips to smoke without burning. You can do that on the beach. Fantastic.
Fishing in Canada feels wilder than a pond in Norwood.
It feels like this big untamed land filled with huge types species of fish, like the muskellunge. They’re terrifying, fucking war, like redneck pike. When I was a little kid at the lake by the cabin, my dad used to try and scare me by saying that if I stayed in the water too long, a muskellunge would bite off my pecker.
Music tribalism has gone, but fishing tribalism is quite entrenched.
I don’t think that’s ever going anywhere. You feel like you can one-up someone when you’re in a different school of thought of fishing. I’m a lone wolf fisherman who fishes in a very basic manner and if I was next to a bunch of carp fishermen who almost look as though they’re in the special forces and I was to catch a bigger fish than them, I’d probably walk it over to them and say ‘hi’ and feel a sense of smug satisfaction.
