Category: Nature: Fish

Sunday 10th November 2013

Danny Howell writes:

In The Countryman’s Weekend Book, published by Seeley service & Co. Ltd., in 1946, Eric Parker features a list of record weights for fish caught in the British Isles. The records for fourteen different fish are given and includes:

“Grayling. Four and a half pounds. On the Wylye, 1885: Dr. T. Sanctuary.”

I wondered if any further details about this fish could be discovered, particularly when in 1885 and where exactly it was caught on the river Wylye, and who was Doctor Sanctuary?

On 22nd December 2013, Peter Hayes, of Shrewton, emailed Danny Howell, to say:

Dear Danny,
Hello -I’ll be a stranger to you. I’ve a copy of your book The Wylye Valley In Old Photographs, and was looking through it for any photos of the river Wylye between Stapleford and Wilton where my club (the Wilton FFC) has had the fishing for 125 years. Found one of “Niagara” at South Newton, and thought I’d ask you if you have :- 1) A good scan of it, &/or 2) any others? The river has changed hugely and we are looking for evidence of those changes!

Meanwhile, I noticed the item on the grayling and Dr. Sanctuary, on your blog, and I have some info on that/ him.

In my book Fly Fishing Outside the Box, Emerging Heresies, published by Coch-y-Bonddu Books this year, I say the following:-

“There’s another reason for us to be cross with Sanctuary. When the grayling record was established by a River Test fish of 4 lbs 8 oz, he went back and falsified his diary to show that he had caught a 4 lb 9 oz grayling (actually 1 lb 9 oz) at Bemerton on the River Nadder (actually on the Wilton FFC waters on the Wylye) but did not change the date.

The Diary Of An All Round Angler (1949) by Patrick Smythe records the details of their fishing day together at Great Wishford on the Wylye on 24 October 1883 and keys precisely to the altered details in Sanctuary’s own diary for that date – a 66-year posthumous conviction for the angler’s lie. You can see it’s been altered.

Tony Hayter is the person who discovered this, and he tells me that Sanctuary’s weasel-claim was made in The Fishing Gazette, 26 July 1913. In referring to the Wiltshire Avon he wrote: ‘In the latter stream, or rather in one of its tributaries, I once caught with a small dry fly a perfectly shaped and conditioned fish which weighed just over 4 1/2 lbs.’ The claim was accepted, and the picture postcard below shows that the lie persisted even after Smythe’s book was published.”

(postcard printed 1953).

Don’t think it was actually claimed as 1885, as it was the date that caught him out, but I might be wrong. I have seen a photocopy of his altered diary entry and he is, I’m afraid, bang to rights, with 1 lb 9oz altered to 4 lb 9oz. It wasn’t his first misleading record grayling claim. However he was a leading light in the Dry Fly Revolution masterminded by F.M. Halford, and a close friend of G.S. Marryatt to whom many fly fishing developments were credited. Just went a bit off the rails in later life. (I might too!)

I’m not too bothered about publicising a 120-year-old lie to the general public, though it’s important for anglers to know that two of the claimed grayling records were false! I guess I just didn’t care for the wrong claim to go on being handed down.

Hope this is useful; and that you might have some river pictures?
Yours, with best wishes, Peter.