ARTHUR’S ARCHIVES Inside fishing history
Our angling historian Keith looks at the career of the father of commercial fisheries, the irrepressible Billy Makin
“It was almost as if Billy Makin owned a very accurate crystal ball”
BILLY Makin was one of the finest anglers of a generation that he and I shared.
He invented the ‘Canal Grey’ float, a compound-tapered balsa waggler designed specifically for fishing on these venues. Rigged for fishing ‘on the drop’, the fine balsa stem enabled each shot to register as the bait fell, giving fabulous bite indication. Bill won a lot of matches using the Canal Grey on rod and line.
So, it came as a shock when he decided that canals were finished as fisheries and at the start of the 1990s built what he described to me at the time as ‘the future of fishing.’ Scouting around for a site, he found a freshly-dug farm lake. Working with the farmer, the site was expanded to five pools. He recognised that anglers need to catch fish and he stocked these lakes to make that a rock-solid probability.
With ‘Phase Two’ seven more lakes came about, followed in the early 1990s by Phase Three and a six-lake match complex, making a total of 18 fishing lakes and three stock ponds.
It was almost as if Bill owned a very accurate crystal ball, because the fishery opened at a time when coarse fishing was going through massive evolutionary turmoil. Almost overnight, sport on rivers and canals seemed to go from good to awful, with several factors, including an influx of invasive cormorants, being blamed.
Bill sold the site almost 20 years ago and it changed hands again in 2020, as a fishing and holiday venue. He now owns a couple of bars in the Thai resort of Pattaya, and also writes thrillers and very funny – if risqué – novels.
It takes some imagination to go from working for British Gas to Pattaya beach via such a route, but Billy Makin is still one of the funniest, most intelligent and intellectually challenging people you will ever meet.