A fish is a fish for ‘a that

Starved of sport at home, Michael Wigan muses on happy away days

Anglers may well have been in lockdown but the migrating salmon have not, so Spring 2020 saw the purest form of salmon conservation in our time.

From late March until the end of the lockdown, no salmon were caught at all. Some fishing owners reacted faster than others but most fishing, as I write, has already stopped or is about to stop. Rivers cannot be closed because their seasons are set by statute, and our politicians have plenty on their minds without taking the time to change statutes on fishing. But they don’t need to because riparian owners listened to the national mood and suspended fishing. The riverbanks emptied and ghillies languished at home.

Most drastically affected were anglers who had travelled north of the Border from England and Wales. Many made their eagerly-awaited annual journey only to have to dismantle their tackle, some after just a single day of pleasure.

Just as the national call for corona crisis volunteers produced a response that was remarkable, so compliance from anglers with their sudden circumscription was immediate and understanding. Angling itself was plainly not an infection zone but the perception of a few having fun while the rest of the country went into lockdown was wrong.

The nearest I got to a fish was talking to an angler in the Caribbean in February. I saw him from afar, looping string like a lassoo then projecting the baited hook far into the sea. Curiosity being what it is I walked up the beach to two men holding string stretching from the sea with coils of it in the sand at their feet.

Everyone knows the feeling of someone approaching when we are watching the fly or waiting for a tug. We shrink inside. I instinctively felt that reaction as I approached the first man so I went on to speak to the second. He prised his mind from the slow theatre underwater and said, yes, the best time to catch a fish was just after high tide. The fish would patrol the retreating shoreline for intertidal prey caught on the hop.

The beach was classic golden sand but the seabed where the hunters worked was dark, as I found when I looked with goggles. Underwater, the scene was one of chalky rock and broken coral with a waving sea-grass coat, dark areas studding bright sand. The fish were amongst the stones.

The fisherman watched the breaking wave for fish positioned on their camouflaged seabed, from where they would charge in and seize titbits on the sea edge. He caught some big fish, he admitted. He said locals did not eat the barracuda, but everything else was fine.

As I walked on he began looping the line round his head again, circling from the waist like a cowboy, and letting go the weighted bait to where waves were building. No rod, no reel, just sensitive fingers holding string. Fishing is fishing.

I wanted to go out beyond the coral reef to see the red snapper and groupers being caught from boats. The skipper made promises but disappointingly no phone call ever came. Young and keen, he was owner and chef in a restaurant at Cane (named after sugarcane) Garden Beach on the island of Tortola. He fished with baits and nets, and with skill and finesse and success.

A dab hand in the kitchen, the only fish for which this chef needed no recipe were parrotfish. They are rainbowcoloured and large and hang about coral cavities. But his reason for leaving them was interesting. Parrotfish grind up the coral to make sand, which in turn creates the sun-baked beaches which lure the treasured tourists.

Those of you seeking a recipe for shark, another of his catches, take note. Shark tastes somewhat acidic, and his solution was to cut a notch in the top of the tail and let them bleed out, then leave the meat one night in milk. These are black-tip reef sharks, so small enough to handle.

I think of Dwight the chef now. His Scottish ancestor distilled rum on the same beach centuries ago. The rum is still made there under the name Callwood, and the ancient Lister engine which ground the cane was made in Glasgow. What you do with this sugarcane rum — two dollars for five dreamy nips — is a story for another day.

“He began looping the line round his head once again, circling from the waist like a cowboy