A MATTER OF ABILITY
This week Dom Garnett has been fishing with a talented match angler whose success is a triumph of determination over adversity
AS ANGLERS, most of us are great at making excuses when we’re not catching. It’s too hot or too cold, we moan, or the fish aren’t feeding. But imagine you found just tying a hook tricky, or a day on the bank exhausting.
This is the reality for Elliot Fay, whose rare muscular wasting disorder can make a challenge of the basics we take for granted.
Not that you’d know it, because his relentlessly positive attitude has helped Elliot achieve amazing things.
“It is what it is,” he says about his condition. “Instead of giving up, I’ve just had to get on with it and find other ways to do things.”
Whether it’s picking matches with milder, less energy-sapping weather, or using a hook-tying gadget where his motor skills won’t co-operate, he just gets on and does it.
In fact, sympathy is often the last thing competitors feel as he beats them off the next peg. Today, it’s my turn on a cool but sunny Tiverton Canal, as he lands a nice skimmer before I’ve even scraped a one-ounce roach.
“Having a competitive family has definitely helped” he says of his successes, which include a superb individual silver in the last Disabled World Championships in Serbia, where he was just 70g from
gold, not to mention a memorable win in the 2016 National Championships.
Equally remarkable is that with no major sponsor, Elliot raised around £2,000 for the World Championships alone, just to compete.
Not that his exploits stop with these kind of events. He’s often in the coin at both club and open matches, while also attending much bigger contests.
At White Acres this summer, for example, he came second out of a hundred-strong festival entry pool over four days.
“If I want it enough, I’ll find a way!” is how he sums up a never-say-die approach to life and fishing. After all, this is the boy who once got into BMX cycling
after being told he would never ride a bike.
These days he is a much-valued part of the team at my local Exeter Angling Centre, while also helping run a small fishery near Torquay and organising matches.
For Elliot, then, it’s a case of accepting certain limits, but also challenging the very notions others have of ability or disability.
“My condition gets worse in the cold and on some days I can’t physically manage,” he admits. “After a six-hour match I’ll feel completely shattered – but I just love to compete.”
You can say that again. My pound or so of bits is easily beaten by a tidy net of canal fish on a rock-hard session today. It won’t be Elliot’s last victory.