Closely related to and following on from “Trent Fever…

Fame”. Trent Fever …Fortune, is a strange illness that drives

anglers to do strange things.

Strange and illogical things in the belief that they will one day
become rich beyond their wildest dreams!  Strange because you
see, there is very little “actual” money to be made from
fishing as a fisherman alone as there are very few
opportunities to actually catch hard straight up cash in
angling unless that is you are actually producing “something”.

That doesn’t stop the odd individual from labouring under the misconception that if they were to actually catch a 22lb barbel from the Trent that it would be the equivalent of winning the lottery and the cash would roll on in! Yes, some money would roll in, of that I am quite certain, the money from an Angling Times Drennan Weekly award for sure but the rest would be in prize form and possibly some product endorsement and sponsorship…But money?

The fact of the matter is, a 22lb Barbel from the Trent is worth around £80.00 in hard currency! I spent more than that celebrating my 14lb barbel at Spearmint Rhino!

That is unless you can write a few articles about “how you did it” or are the maker and supplier of the bait on which the capture was made or you have a financial percentage interest in the sales of that bait and the tackle it was caught on ( financial sponsorship…as rare as rocking horse shit so that is highly unlikely)  or you have full high quality footage on digital video that you could sell the rights to or you are perhaps the riparian owner of the stretch that the fish came from and will benefit from an upturn in day ticket sales…After that I am struggling to see many opportunities to make had cash. Therefore is it a good idea to waste a big chunk of your life chasing a dream that simply is not going to come to fruition? I would say not. But still even I will be investing a big chunk of my time come the end of the season chasing one of those elusive “super barbel” , the ones that tip the scales at over 14lb or even better 15lb! but  make no bones about it, yes there are probably more barbel in the Trent than all the other rivers in England combined but that still does not mean the really big girls are common. They are not! The difference being with me is that I do not think that catching one will bring with it great wealth, in fact I know that it won’t! Therefore I will be far more relaxed with my fishing, far more laid back and less eager to dominate what are considered to be the best pegs…I will be seeking solitude so that I can play my game “one v one” and I expect success because I know that one v one puts things into my favour as I will be using hard learned watercraft and will be fishing with top baits…Sponsored baits, bait sponsorship earned the hard way…through years of “creativity ” not through one single fish of merit! Because I know that there is no financial reward attached directly to the capture of a bigger than average fish, look at the late great Terry Lampard, he had a personal best list unrivaled by 99.999% of anglers but on his passing did anyone mention his captures specifically?…No. People simply stated “What a great guy he was” And that was his reward for all the dark days and weeks of grueling inactivity besides waterways that simply refused to give up their occupants without a battle of great attrition interspersed with those tiny moments of great elation when things slip perfectly into place and another personal best is taken even higher, that was the “fortune” that he made during his fishing career and that is the fortune everyone should aspire to. When we finally decide that we are glad we have had enough and roll off our mortal coil it is better that people think of us as ” Nice guys” rather than cut throat snide bastards that would do anything to get another big fish on the bank? And that being the case if anyone wishes to make money from fishing the Trent ( or any other water for that matter) they had better start getting creative and producing something of value. Articles. Books. Films. Bait. Tackle. Guiding Services. All these things have intrinsic cash value…the actual fish, far less so! An article in one of the monthlies has roughly the same cash value as a 22lb barbel…think about it!