Page 31 - Anglian angling on the broads

30 Environment Agency Angle on the Broads Environment Agency Angle on the Broads 31

Large fish still exist habitats of breeding and migrating Pye’s style of fishing for pike is well and the 35 pounders caught by Reg
despite modern problems birds and develop wildfowl for the documented – large live baits, float- Pownall and Frank Wright. Then in
shooting season. fished on leadless tackle close to the 1969 came Prymnesium blooms and
edges of the vast Norfolk reedbeds. the demise of fishing on the Thurne
Jim became captivated by pike system. When the algae Prymnesium
fishing around 1920 and went on “Dead baits in amongst the thick parvum dies, toxins are released
to create the Jim Vincent Spoon weed will not work”, Dennis Pye into the water and oxygen is
and the ‘Norfolk’ method of dead often said. But he was to be proved greatly reduced.
bait spinning, which have taken wrong. Bill Giles and Reg Sandys
their rightful place in angling were contemporaries of Dennis Pye, When fish cannot escape these toxic
history. However, Jim Vincent’s but their fishing methods differed areas, disastrous fish kills can occur.
greatest contribution to Broadland dramatically. Whilst they both After the summer of 1969, it would
pike angling is without doubt the used live baits, their open minded be ten years before the first pointers
restocking of pike into the Thurne approach to other methods, in to the recovery of the Thurne’s giant
system that he organised after the particular the legered dead bait, was pike were seen. During those years,
disastrous sea flood of 1938. to set a new style and direction for very few pike in excess of 30 pounds
pike fishing on the Broads and for would be recorded from Broadland.
When the sea smashed through the pike fishing in general.
Horsey Gap on February 12th 1938, In 1979 came the first signs of
the resulting surge of salt water The 1960s saw the first ‘heyday’ of recovery, initially from limited areas
wiped out all the freshwater fish in Broadland piking, with some very of the Thurne system, but soon to be
the Thurne system with the exception impressive pike boated, the largest followed by the capture of massive
of eels. The task of restoring the being Peter Hancock’s 40 pounder pike from other Broadland waters,
area’s pike fishing was taken on by
Jim Vincent who, during the years
1939–1945, caught many pike from
the Bure broads to help restock the
Thurne system.

By March 1944, Jim had captured
23 pike in excess of 20 pounds, the
largest being a 29 pounder from
Hoveton Great Broad in 1930. The
30 pounder that he had so longed
for was to elude his efforts, although
a fish lost after slipping the gaff
was estimated at 35 pounds. So
Jim Vincent did not capture a real
Broadland ‘monster’ but perhaps he
is the greatest of all the Broadland
pikers – not for his captures that
were impressive enough – but for his
contributions to the pike angling of
Broadland.
It was not until the 1950s and the
advent of a new attitude towards
angling that pike fishing began to
be taken seriously by a new breed
of angler, the ‘specimen hunter’.
We can only imagine and wonder at the numbers and One man in particular burst upon the
sizes these pike would have attained during periods of angling world in a blaze of publicity
with a string of big pike captures.
our history, when circumstances were so much kinder to His name was Dennis Pye and he
stamped his own identity on pike
the environment. fishing in Broadland. A successful boat session for
BASG member David Batten