Extreme Fishing (2 page)

This place is obsessed with catfish and here in Spain they grow to epic proportions. If they’re not in the river, they’re on the wall. A 150-pound giant protrudes out of the brown
wood above the bar, like an ichthyic tumour.

‘To me it looks like it’s swum past a nuclear power station. It’s too big; it’s not right,’ I say, jabbering at the camera.

Everyone is staring at me.
Just pretend you’re Noel Edmonds, Robson
, I think.
He makes the camera his friend; he has a winning formula
. But I don’t want to be bloody
Noel Edmonds. He’s a bit creepy, with too much facial hair, and I don’t trust men with beards. Blind panic descends as I look around and see everyone in the bar has a beard. I
don’t know what the hell I’m doing and they’re all staring at me thinking ‘You lucky Geordie git – how did
you
get a fishing programme?’ And I’m
thinking exactly the same thing. I’m racing my words and I’m so tense I sound as if I’ve had a hit of helium. I’m somewhere between Noel Edmonds and Alan Carr, and
that’s not a place I’d like to be.

The first take is a disaster and we need to re-shoot the scene. It’s not getting any better and my inner voices are now shouting.

Why the hell are you doing this, Robson?

Because I didn’t think it through.

You’re winging it and dying on your arse. You need a script. You don’t even know who you are without a script. Why haven’t you got an American series like Hugh Laurie or
Damian Lewis?

Because I didn’t go to Eton. No, it’s because you’re fannying around pretending to present a fishing show. Oh God, I’m a fraud. I want to go home.

‘And, action!’ shouts the director.

I have nothing to give so I waffle. We move outside to meet Birmingham-born contributor Colin Bunn, who is going to help me catch a catfish. Up until this point the biggest fish I have ever
caught is a four-pound trout and an eighteen-pound salmon. Colin’s nice but I can tell deep down he pities me.

Although I’ve never landed a wels catfish before, I’ve thankfully done loads of research. For example, I know that catfish are also known as sheatfish – and that’s not a
Geordie insult. (‘You call this a catfish, bonny lad? I call it a sheat fish!’ In fact, it sounds more French: ‘Zay are really sheat fish.’) I rehearse some lines in my head
ready to use on camera. ‘The Latin name is
Silurus glanis
, they have good hearing and can live for around thirty years. The species is not indigenous to the area and there are concerns
about the ecological impact on the Ebro, including a decimation of the endemic Iberian barbel species.’ Colin sets up a couple of rods and I relate the facts to camera like rapid machine-gun
fire. It is another total waste of video tape.

I give up talking directly to the camera and instead get some tips from our contributor. Colin, like many other Brits, used to come here fishing on holiday and loved it so much that he moved
here permanently. I want to know if these catfish really do live up to their fearsome reputation.

‘I can give you an example,’ says Colin. ‘Put your two hands on the rod.’

I lift the heavy rod as he instructs. Colin gets on the other end of it and yanks me forward, pulling the line up and down sharply.

‘That’s what they’re like, and they shake their heads like this so you get that banging action.’

After the demonstration we crack on with the real thing. Colin’s mate, Ashley, rows the bait out into the middle of the river and drops it in. We are using halibut pellets, which are fed
to farmed fish. They look a bit like pony nuts, which possibly explains why some of the catfish are the size of Welsh Cobs.

‘I’ve heard they can take egrets off the surface,’ I say.

‘And swans,’ says Colin.

OK, Colin, I see your swan and I raise you. ‘And wild boar,’ I add.

‘Yeah, anything that swims in there that’s big enough.’

Anglers have been known to tell a few tall tales in their time but this fish really does have an incredible reputation. In the eighteenth century, it was reported that the body of a woman had
been found inside a catfish. Well, I wouldn’t mind curling up in one right now, because at least I would be dying in private rather than in full view of the cameras.

One of the sensors starts to bleep. Colin hands me the rod and I pretend to know what I’m doing. The fish packs a punch and I am immediately working hard. It runs, almost pulling me into
the water as Colin had demonstrated.

‘Just pump and wind,’ Colin says. What he means is that I need to lift the rod to pull the fish towards me, then wind it in quickly. If I just try to reel, the reel could break, or
burn out the clutch. Either way, I could lose the fish and, after all this effort and anxiety, that’s not something I’m prepared to do. Deep down I know I am living the dream; I’m
just looking forward to the time I can start enjoying it.

The catfish hoves into view in the shallows. Colin gets hold of it by the lip and passes the large fella to me. This is my chance to share my knowledge of catfish with the viewer, but all I can
say is: ‘Look at the size of that! Oh, my goodness, what a beautiful creature.’ I look down at it again, with its massive mouth and strange fleshy whiskers (barbels); it’s
certainly not a looker. Beautiful? Why did I say that? It’s impressive but not pretty – a bit like Ann Widdecombe.

The fish is weighed and comes in at 33.5 pounds. I carry it back to the river and release it to swim another day. Thank God I didn’t fail on the fishing side of things on my first outing:
I can’t present but at least I can fish. I take a breath as I look across the murky Ebro to the verdant Spanish countryside; it really is lovely here. Right, let’s see if I can reel in
another. Over the next few hours it’s a catfish-fest. I land a dozen fish and my personal best is ninety pounds – the biggest river fish I have ever caught. All together a 400-pound
haul isn’t bad for a day’s work.

I pick up the phone to the producer, Hamish Barbour. I want to talk about my problems in depth. He listens.

‘Basically, Hamish, it’s all been a big mistake. I can’t present to save my life. I might have got lucky with the catfish, but I’m feeling like a total fraud – the
only fishing I’ve done is on some streams in the northeast. Why didn’t you choose Paxman? Or Chris Tarrant, an angling ninja and an actual TV
presenter
? Hamish, you’ve got
the wrong man.’

‘No, we haven’t, Robson. We want you. We believe in you. You have something they don’t.’

‘What’s that? Well, I suppose I am better looking.’

‘Exactly. They’ll never look as good on camera as you do.’

This is music to every shallow actor’s ears – all we want to know is that we look good on camera. Hamish, the TV Svengali and puppet-master, plays me like a carp in a bucket. (No
offence to carp fishermen, although they hate me already – but more on that later.) After our chat, my confidence slowly starts to return. I realise I need to embrace the opportunity and stop
worrying. Everything is going to be OK.

Later that evening we travel by car to the coast just south of Barcelona. We’re all tired but we have to shoot a night fishing sequence. Centuries ago, fishermen used to
catch fish by putting flames on the water to attract sardines, rather like moths. Tonight we are using halogen lamps. Without sardines big fish wouldn’t exist, and I enthuse about the species
on camera. It’s going really well.

I am on a boat with director Jeremy Cadle and two guys who don’t speak a word of English. My Spanish is also poor. It’s pitch black save the lanterns and a few torches, and as the
fish come to the surface I say to Jeremy, ‘Aren’t those a bit big for sardines?’

‘No,’ he says.

‘In fact, are you’re sure they’re not mackerel?’

‘No, Robson, they are sardines,’ he says with the utmost authority.

‘Oh, OK,’ I reply, assuming he must be a marine biologist. He is not.

We film for seven hours, gathering the fish in nets. I do a PTC (piece to camera) about the sardines and the fact that I have never caught so many fish in such a short time. There are thousands
of them. I take one in my hands and say, ‘If it weren’t for sardines, big game fish like marlin wouldn’t exist.’ One of the Spanish guys lightly taps me on the arm but I
ignore him and carry on talking. He coughs loudly. He is ruining my PTC.

‘What?’ I say indignantly.

‘Eh, Señor, no sardine. Mackerel. Mackerel,’ he smiles, revealing several missing teeth.

I can hear the blood whooshing around my brain as the pressure increases. I thank our Spanish friend and shoot Jeremy a look that could freeze concrete.
Oh, bloody hell! All the filming is
wasted, utterly wasted, because I haven’t said the word ‘mackerel’ once.
There is no way we can hide this mistake with clever voiceover and editing, and an entire
night’s work is now heading for the cutting-room floor. I am furious with Jeremy but inside I chide myself for being a fool. I knew they were mackerel so why did I doubt myself and trust a
man who doesn’t even own a fishing rod? I look up at the stars and the Milky Way as we head for shore. My Uncle Matheson appears like Obi-Wan Kenobi with a bright aura around him.

‘You can do this, Robson, but first you must believe. Trust your instincts,’ he booms majestically across the night sky.

Elusive Giant Grouper

Jeremy tries to make amends by telling me the size of the giant grouper I am going to catch this morning. He says, arms outstretched, ‘They grow up to two thousand
pounds.’
Wow
, I think, totally forgetting the fact that he’s not a marine biologist. Grouper do grow to that size, but not here off the coast of Spain. But off we go into the
void, me as trusting as a child. It’s like
Living in Oblivion
with Steve Buscemi.

We are fishing using glass-bottomed boxes that you put in the water and which act like large goggles. Groupers are stout ambush predators with vast mouths: their jaw pressure is around 800
pounds per square inch; a man’s clenched fist is only 35–40. Their powerful mouths and gills can suck their prey in from a distance, a bit like Simon Cowell. The species are also
hermaphrodites: born female, they can turn into males if there aren’t enough cocks in the shoal, so to speak. (And we thought such versatility between the sexes was a modern phenomenon, when
fish have in fact been gender-bending for millions of years – and a bit more realistically than RuPaul.)

We submerge the box in the water and wait . . . and wait and wait. There’s bugger-all down there! And after not hours but
three days
what do we catch? Diddlysquat. It has been a
complete waste of time and I have come to the conclusion there’s nothing in the sea. It’s empty. And do you want to know my theory? It’s those damned Spanish fishermen, who, by
the way, we pay millions and millions of pounds every year to fish off the coast of Africa whilst our own British fishermen struggle to survive. And then they come and illegally plunder British
waters as well. Not to mention the bureaucratic idiots who started the practice of discarding, whereby tonnes upon tonnes of fish are thrown back every year because of the stupid EU quota system.
And these muppets get paid like footballers and only work on Wednesdays so as not to spoil both weekends. Don’t get me started! But you can do your bit by supporting Hugh
Fearnley-Whittingstall’s incredible ‘Fish Fight’ campaign to bring an end to the madness and terrible waste.

Back on the boat, my patience has been tested to the max by the ‘sardine’ and grouper debacles. I talk to Jeremy about how the show is going and he tells me he thinks it’s
going swimmingly. I say, ‘But we didn’t catch anything today.’ He replies, ‘Robson, it’s called fishing, not catching.’ I want to strangle him.

Seeing as we have caught bugger-all so far, save the catfish, Hamish suggests we push on to the Canary Islands to see what we can find there. Everyone is winging it and
it’s not a comfortable feeling. Behind the scenes, Hamish is foaming at the mouth like a rabid dog. He has seen the rushes of Spain – uncut footage that will later be edited into the
final programme – and says we have no more than five minutes of a show. This really is our last-chance saloon.

‘Go and catch a marlin, Robson,’ he says on the phone to me.

‘Easier said than done,’ I say. ‘Haven’t you read Hemingway’s
The Old Man and the Sea
?’

‘Make it happen. I believe in you.’

Uncle Obi-Wan Matheson echoes the sentiment in my head: ‘Believe.’

But today, much like the rest of the trip, there is plenty of behind-the-scenes drama that the TV audience doesn’t get to see: it transpires that our marlin fisherman in
Tenerife, the one we are so heavily relying on to save the show, has had a skinful the night before and crashed his boat! So our first task is to find another contributor. Mercifully the production
team manages to track down a Scottish guy called John with a big boat. Crisis averted.

I shake hands with our Scottish fisherman, who is tanned like leather. He has brought his wife and another old seadog along and boy do they all love to drink. It’s like a bleeding episode
of
Eldorado
.

‘How’s it looking today?’ I ask.

‘Looks great. Great weather – nice and hot,’ he says.

‘Fantastic. So what brought you to Tenerife?’

‘The sunshine.’

‘Not the fishing?’

‘Nope, the sunshine.’

It quickly becomes apparent that this guy isn’t remotely interested in fishing; he’s just an old sailor who likes going round the islands topping up his tan.

‘When did you last catch something?’

‘Haven’t caught anything in, er, three years.’

Oh. My. God.
¹

We end up fannying around with Scottish John for two days and – surprise, surprise – we catch nothing. I’m in mental decline.

After a day of not even catching a sea cucumber, the biggest insult to an empty-handed fisherman is to make him taste another man’s fish, but the team is running out of
ideas. I look at the camera and say, ‘It’s called escolar – because it looks like it’s wearing reading glasses like an academic or “scholar”. It’s also
called butterfish.’