Viva Lewes Issue #162 March 2020

LEWES WORTHY
RIP Jim ‘The Fish’ Smith
The Ouse has lost its dearest friend
With his battered trilby and
deep Sussex brogue, Jim Smith
(aka ‘Jim The Fish’) was the
archetypal river bailiff.
One of a fast vanishing breed
of countrymen, Jim, who was
head bailiff for the Ouse Angling
Preservation Society for 55
years, devoted his entire adult
life to the river and was a legend
throughout the county.
A Trustee of the Ouse & Adur Rivers Trust, he
also gave many years of service to his local parish
council and played an active role within the
Cliffe Bonfire Society.
Jim was born in Brighton, but when he was 12,
after the death of his father and his mother’s
remarriage, the family moved to Isfield, where
he remained throughout his life. He left school
at 14 to begin work as a garden boy on Lord
Rupert Nevill’s estate; when the nursery there
closed, he transferred to the East Sussex River
Board where among other things he worked on
the early Lewes Flood defences.
A keen angler since boyhood, Jim was approached
by the Preservation Society in the
1960s to take on the role of Head Bailiff. This
was a full-time post where, in addition to
managing the fishing on the River Ouse, Jim
supervised the Society’s stocked trout fishery at
nearby Barcombe Reservoir.
Jim was a keen writer and a staunch environmentalist,
long before the term became
fashionable. He was a founding member of the
original Sussex Ouse Conservation Society,
which preceded The Rivers Trust. Jim’s love
of the countryside was evident
through his regular features in
the Ouse & Adur Rivers Trust’s
newsletter and more recently the
Freshwater Informer magazine. In
2015 Jim appeared in a three-part
series for Meridian TV entitled
Tales of the River Man. That year
he also featured in a lengthy
interview (by Nick Davies) for
the Guardian newspaper.
Undoubtedly, Jim’s happiest memory was receiving
his Long Service Award by the Country
Landowners Association, from the Duke of
Rutland, at the CLA Game Fair in 2009. This
was awarded in recognition of Jim’s 45 years
of continuous service as a river keeper. One
of only three such medals ever to have been
awarded, it took Jim completely by surprise.
The closure of the Barcombe Reservoir fishery
in 1992, after it was taken over by South East
Water, deprived Jim of a substantial portion of
his income. Worse was to follow when, in 1997,
the Preservation Society found it could no
longer afford the services of a full-time bailiff.
It says much for Jim’s determination and devotion
to his calling that he continued to fulfil
this post on a largely voluntary basis.
In recent years, Jim’s health began to decline,
and his mobility suffered, though he still
enjoyed getting out on the bank whenever
he could, talking to the anglers and generally
keeping an eye on things. Jim passed away in
Eastbourne Hospital on 27th December 2019.
The River Ouse has lost its dearest and best
friend. Stewart Allum
Photo by Stewart Allum
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