Sea fishing
I
lay in my narrow lumpy bed
and counted the warped
polystyrene tiles that covered
the ceiling. My mother told
me to count sheep if I couldn’t sleep.
From where I lay I could see no sheep.
Polystyrene tiles I could see; 162 of
them. I was seven years old, and the
reason I couldn’t sleep was because
my father and I were going on a
mackerel-fi shing trip the next day.
I was simply too excited. The washing
machine in my head was churning
with fantasies of fat fi sh.
Fifty-three years later, with
thousands of fi shing trips under
my belt, I still can’t sleep the night
before a trip. What could be more
exciting than a trip slow jigging for
cod on my own boat, Kitty K, with
equally excitable Shooting Times
photographer Paul Quagliana? For
days we’d been swapping slivers of
interesting research gleaned from
YouTube videos, charter skippers,
anglers, tackle-shop owners and
Google searches.
“Slow jigging” is one of those
reinventions of something that
cod anglers have been doing for
generations. With a little Japanese
restyling, a magic sprinkle of
American marketing and some
cute accessories — such as special
“slow jigging rods” and even “slow
jigging reels”, the sport has exploded
on to the British sea fi shing scene,
accompanied by the “ker-ching!”
of cash tills. Pirking
In the old days we called it “pirking”.
A pirk was a shiny tube of chromed
steel with a big treble hook dangling
from the bottom. The 8oz pirk was
lowered from the boat and bounced
up and down — “pirked” — over the
undersea wreck or rough ground that
held a population of cod.
The bottom-dwelling gut-bucket
cod can never resist an easy lunch
and doesn’t stray far from the sea bed
so it would attack the silver shaft in
the hope of it being a wounded sprat
or herring and get hooked on the
massive treble.
To make a pirk, we would hacksaw
through a set of push-bike handlebars
— preferably someone else’s — to make
a 6in tube, fi ll it with molten lead
and drill a hole at each end for a split
ring. One is to mount the huge hook,
the other to attach a swivel for the
mainline to the reel. P.QUAGLIANASHOOTING TIMES & COUNTRY MAGAZINE • 57
Sadly, we can no longer cannibalise
bikes to make pirks. Instead, we
watch bizarrely convincing online
videos then go and hand over £15 for
something that does not resemble a
pirk. But it does exactly the same job.
A modern slow jig is a pirk that has
been re-engineered into something
fancy and expensive. It is still a lump
of metal that sinks quickly from
boat to sea bed and is still “jigged” or
“pirked” or “cranked” up and down.
And it still has a hook attached. But
with all that comes a whole new waft
of science and technology and aqua-
dynamic design.
Instead of being tubular, the slow
jig is leaf-shaped to make it sink more
quickly, but “fl utter” in the water
as it’s on the downward cycle of the
jig action. Instead of being chromed
steel, it now has holographic patterns
on it that can only be seen under UV
light. “Because fi sh have UV vision,”
explains the tackle-shop owner whom
Paul buys his jigs from. Do they?
And instead of a fat, dangerous
treble hook hanging off the bottom,
the modern slow jig has “keeper
hooks”; two single hooks hung from
the top, the head end of the jig, which
are cleverly arranged to face in two
diff erence directions. In theory this
makes them lethal to a fi sh attack, but
much less likely to hang into a wreck
or structure.
The manufacturers have failed to
inform the wrecks in Lyme Bay that
keeper hooks aren’t supposed to keep
snagging on their rusty structure.
During the day, we lost enoughA cheaper Fladen metal lure with a fearsome
treble hook designed for slow jigging for cod