Back in 2011, Graham Booth produced a book entitled “A
History of Pike Fishing Vol.1”. This book was the product of years of research
and as with all historians, Booth beat a path to the door of one of the most respected
angling historians in the world, especially when it came to pike, Fred
Buller MBE.
Fred was very generous with his time and information and
even agreed to write the foreword for the book based on the synopsis he had
been shown by Booth.
Sadly, he wasn’t shown the section where Booth was heavily
critical of Buller and his assessment of Alfred Jardine's claimed fish sizes. For those people who knew Buller it was a clear example of
an author trying to stand on the shoulders of greatness to attain some status for
himself. Buller used to refer to this as
“The Conker Syndrome” (Recollection I) where he said that, as a schoolboy, if you played conkers and had one that was a 15’er
(broken 15 others) and yours was broken, that one would become a 16’er. So by trying
to find fault with Buller’s work Booth clearly hoped to gain credibility for the contents of his book.
To observers it just seemed to be a cheap shot, a very
personal attack upon one of the true gentlemen of angling. With this article I hope to restore the balance and set the record straight for history.
Let us start by reproducing the four page article extracted
from the book by 'Classic Angling' magazine No.73 September/October 2011. This covers the nature of the book and the attempted denigration of Buller.
Buller was terribly hurt by this, not just the sensationalism in
the book being reproduced in such a magazine.
Buller would never get involved in a slanging match, he was only interested in the facts. However, he felt (incorrectly) that his friends would feel let
down if they thought his work had been sloppy. As only true scientists do,
he referred to his previous notes and went through them again to see if there were
any areas where new information had been forthcoming that would change the context of his
previous articles.
So Buller produced the following document which he distributed
to his friends, detailing everything that had been found to date.
As ever, Buller is brutally frank, pointing out his mistake
from the new work Booth had brought to light, but it didn't actually change anything Buller had concluded previously. Indeed, Booth’s perception is
best descibed by the work of Conan Doyle in Sherlock Holmes; “Never make the
facts fit the theory, always produce the theory from the facts.”
Sadly, Buller died in February 2016 and even in his
obituary somebody wrote who should have known better that his (Buller's) analytical power was waning in his
later years. However, this article shows that his mind was as sharp as ever. He said in
'Recollections' that he would like to be remembered as a true scientist. Nobody
ever gets things absolutely right all the time, but he hoped he would be regarded as someone
who took criticism and new information on board with gratitude as all that
matters is the truth.
Clearly he achieved his life's goal, and I hope that everyone else
will learn from what was a sorry little episode in Fred's history and a clear attempt to usurp the status of
a great man in his late 80’s by sensationalising a non-story.