A conservation minded Macnab

A midsummer meander through Essex countryside brings a shooting legend to life, with benefits for some fragile species

- SIMON GARNHAM

Bass are back in the estuary in good numbers. Around the south coast of Britain, small ‘school’ bass move inshore during spring and summer months, feeding on crustaceans, shrimps and sandeels. They join larger resident fish, which take crab, mackerel and even sea trout. For sea anglers, it is a time of great variety and excitement.

I was introduced to bass fishing as a boy. But the late 1980s inland sea species were scarce, and I was never bitten by the bug in the same way as shooting caught my imagination; there seemed to be too much waiting and not enough action.

Now that numbers have recovered and my children have embraced night fishing and catching from a kayak as being seriously good fun, I find I too have rediscovered the thrill of reeling in a big fish.

Personal challenge

Midsummer’s day, 21 June, tends to be the time when the likelihood of a catch becomes greater than the likelihood of a blank. So in recent years, I’ve introduced a personal challenge, rather like John Buchan’s Macnab, where — for a day — I see what I can achieve with a reel and a rifle. Bass replace the salmon and a muntjac or fox have to suffice as replacement for red deer in Essex in June.

“You’ve got to rediscover the comforts of life by losing them a little,” proclaimed Lord Lamancha to his friends Sir Edward Leithen and John Palliser-Yeates in the sporting classic John Macnab.