Where does the whole big fish are more worthy than regular fish thing come from? Is it because fishing is such a male thing?

If there is one thing that makes me feel sad about fishing and the people who are coming into the sport or discovering a specific facet of the sport - lure fishing for bass, carp fishing, river barbel fishing etc. - it’s the level of snobbery and/or disdain which centers around the size of the fish you may or may not catch. I was doing a Facebook Live thing on the very friendly Saltwater Lure Fishing group on Saturday evening, and whilst I genuinely love doing these kinds of things, I do feel a bit sad about fishing when somebody sounds almost a bit embarrassed that their personal best bass was “only 72cms”. I can picture a bass around that size in my head, and I don’t care what any big fish gurus might say - that’s a cracking bass in anybody’s book, and it’s a fish to be mightily proud of……………….

I have no idea how many anglers out there are intending to chase bass on lures this season, or how many anglers might have discovered this kind of fishing come the end of the year. I have no idea how many mums or dads or grandparents of friends might take a youngster fishing for the first time and help to ignite a lifelong passion. I have no idea how many anglers might fancy a crack at some big carp which they see other anglers cradling in magazines and on social media and so on. And so on. What I do have an idea about though is how many anglers are going to end up feeling a bit inadequate or useless or unfulfilled because they aren’t catching all these amazing “big fish” that anglers bang on about as being the only fish worth catching - to which I say what a bloody shame.

Catching fish is fun. Catching bass on lures is fun. For sure we might dream of landing a 10lb+ bass, but from the shore especially here in the UK this is not exactly a remotely common occurrence and I just think it’s a shame when smaller bass which most of us catch far more regularly than “big bass” are almost put down upon as not worthy of our excitement. I love bass above all other fish, I really do, but I have been lucky enough to fish for species of fish which grow far bigger and pull far harder, and as much as a 10lb+ bass may well be a dream fish to catch here in northern Europe, I’ll very gladly take a load of “lesser” bass because they are bloody good fun to catch. It’s all about catching fish and loving doing so to me, and I don’t feel remotely ashamed to say that a school bass in a raging bit of surf is about as much fun as fishing gets in my book. Hell, if that 10lb+ bass I was lucky enough to catch last autumn hadn’t come on one of these new soft plastics that I am so involved with then I’m not sure I’d have even told anybody apart from a few mates about it. I don’t like trying to be a hero with my fishing, and I am very uncomfortable with anything that can come across as a bit of boasting. Of course I was pleased with the fish, but the fact that I was lucky enough to hook and land it hasn’t made me a better angler or man or human being, and I sure as hell didn’t judge my fishing success and failures last year based on this one “big bass”.

Now don’t get me wrong here because I have done plenty of obsessing about “big fish” or “specimen fish” in my fishing life. I used to obsess about trying to catch a 20lb+ cod or a 50lb+ conger eel from the shore which I never did achieve, but I do know that I also used to love heading to the north coast in a big winter storm and banging a few codling out because it was quite simply a huge amount of fun. For me I guess I came to bass fishing quite late in my fishing life so perhaps I had got the whole specimen fish thing out of my system, and let’s be realistic here, when you go looking at the relative size of the carp or pike or conger eels or sharks and so on that a lot of other anglers catch, a 10lb+ bass really isn’t a “big fish” as such. Of course we try to catch bigger bass or bigger fish, it’s all a part of fishing, but does the catching or not catching of bigger bass make the other bass you might catch any less worthy? Not in my book, and especially not with how our bass stocks are. How good is it going to feel to catch any bass of any size again this year?