BOAT ANGLER
Available from the Scilly Islands to Shetland, whiting have been astandby of many aboat fishing trip over the past 128 years. Angling historian Mike Millman traces the passage of time and the biggest fish caught from 1912 to the present day
In that early year just ahead of the outbreak of the First World War boat angling was thriving. One of its devotees was H.C Nicol who, in September 1912, reported that he had caught a whiting of 5lb 2oz in Cornwall’s Mounts Bay off Penzance, for which he had witnesses to the capture. The weight and his fish was accepted as the best ever by the organisations controlling the sport.
Four months prior to the catch of the whiting Nicol had fished the Seven Stones Reef off Lands End and had taken ling of 45lb that would remain the heaviest known until March 1974 when Plymouth angler Terry Walker upgraded it by a mere one pound; but it was enough. I remember it well. It was a bitterly cold January day and we were 31 miles from land aboard Steve Barrett’s Boa Pescador. In those days, now so long ago, charter boats just chugged along and the five-hour journey home with the temperature dropping below zero was a real test. The consolation was the many huge ling and pollack we had taken that day.
Returning to Nicol’s whiting, it was not until March 1940 that it was replaced with a fish of 6lb by E.H. Tame at Scotland’s Loch Shieldaig, and it remained the best until Rita Barrett’s specimen of 6lb 3oz 3dr taken off Rame Head in Cornwall in January 1971.
The winters of 1970 and 1971 were good ones for “whiting bashing”, as it was termed, and making a catch of 30 or 40 on the grounds off Rame Head was easy. The weight range was 2¼ to 3½lb but far fewer numbers of the latter size were resident. Rita’s fish was therefore exceptional and she was well accoladed for the capture. The shift of the record over the best part of 1,000 miles from Ross & Cromarty to Cornwall is one of the biggest in angling. Following the examination at the Plymouth laboratory the fish was sent to Alwyn Wheeler at the Natural History Museum for confirmation, which was duly given. Six years after Rita’s record was set it was overtaken by S. Dearman fishing off Dorset’s West Bay who took one of 6lb 4oz. The weight differential was minis
