55 divErfrom a pleasant dip in a chalk stream on a
warm July afternoon to lying face-down in
Highland lochs in November, questioning
my own sanity.
Grayling are by far my favourite fish,
though barbel come a close second. I’ve
spent the most time filming these ladies of
the stream in the Peak District, as it’s not
too far from where I live in Nottingham.
It took years of observation to work out
where the grayling breed and the best
times to see this. The males fight each
other in spectacles reminiscent of stags
rutting. The darkened males then slink off
with the paler female grayling and find an
area of fine gravel.
There is a misconception that most
freshwater fish are a muddy brown colour,
but to dispel this you only need to look at
a grayling’s fins, with their hints of violet,
flashes of kingfisher blue and deep warm
reds flaring though.
Above: Glimpse of the ghost
carp in Stoney Cove.Above right: An eel.Frustratingly, grayling don’t return to
the same spot each time, as a salmon or
trout would to a redd, so leaving a camera
in place could be a vain exercise.
But, finally, I was there watching as a
male placed his dorsal fin over a female
and the two fish began to spawn – an
amazing sight that had taken years of
work to capture.C
OMMON SPECIES WEREsometimes
surprisingly hard to find. Carp, for
example, proved tricky because ponds
containing lots of them tend to be quite
mucky.
Sometimes success is just a matter of
luck. With Rob Cuss, a fellow fish-fanatic,
I went for an April dive at Stoney Cove in
an effort to photograph pike spawning.
It was pretty cold, not helped by the
fact that I was wearing a wetsuit, and the
temperature wasn’t much over 10°C downon the deck as we dipped in to check out
some regular haunts. The algae bloom had
started early that year, and the dive-
schools had already been in so visibility
was horrific, but we pushed on.
Rob pointed to something and, sure
enough, it was a pike, but it was very much
on its own, which doesn’t help when
you’re after spawning shots.
After 45 minutes I was starting to feel
the cold a bit, so signalled that we should
head back. As we were checking the weeds
on our return journey I noticed a funny
white shape tucked away. It was the wrong
shape and colour for a pike, but no perch
or roach could be that big.
What it was was the almost-mythical
ghost carp that calls Stoney Cove home, a
fair lump of a fish. It was just sat there and
let us fire off a few shots.
I’d heard about carp being in Stoney for
years but had put it down to tall stories
and narcosis until this huge white carp,
the site’s own Moby Dick, put in its
welcome appearance.
The filming has largely taken over from
fishing for me. It has been a fantastic tool
for observing fish behaviour, such as when
shoal-fish such as perch and roach mob
predators like pike when they spot them
staying behind and close to the tail – much
as songbirds will mob a buzzard.
I’ve seen fish team up or, at the very
least, take advantage of each other, with
perch shadowing eels as they root around
for prey, and moving in to grab fleeing
bullheads and small invertebrates.
Low-interference filming is now being
used to a much greater extent to monitor
fish, while the arrival of drones has helped
massively with counting salmon and trout
redds.
What now? I’d like to write another
book, perhaps on the places, people and
fish I’ve come across, and also try to film
more British-waters marine fish, though
not all of them – there are around 400
species and most live in the deep sea!
Some of the European freshwater fish
such as Cozimo barbel, Amur pike and
huchen sound like a challenge, too.Watch Every UK Freshwater Fish Filmed
Underwaterat jackperksphotography.
com, and don’t miss Jack Perks’ talk
about the project at DIVE 2019.FRESHWATER DIVER