When reading Andreas Möller's treatise on the pike, a strange question arises very early on: is it really primarily about the predatory fish?

Or is it just a reason to ponder fishing?

More precisely: about your own enthusiasm for this sport.

Because it seems, if you follow the author, almost unthinkable that the elegant and extremely aggressive animal could exist independently of people who pursue it.

Maxime: If you say pike, you also have to say line, hook and spoon.

This is signaled by the body of anyone who sees a specimen and wants to pull it ashore: "It goes through me like a surge of electricity, and it's back immediately: the nervousness that is difficult for non-anglers to understand, in which enthusiasm for nature and hunting fever mix!"

Kai Spanke

Editor in the Feuilleton.

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Such passages want to be justified, which is why Möller glorifies the “prey drive mode” with a culture-critical reflex that is quite common in such contexts into a noble impulse that cannot be stopped even “in the age of supermarkets and digital delivery services”.

Incidentally, the length and weight of the pike are important, but aesthetics play an equally important role: if the fish is ugly, it's not good for much.

Nevertheless, the desire to "immerse yourself more deeply in nature for a moment" stands above all, and - cultural criticism, second act - "modern life with its virtual options for experiencing nature has changed nothing".

This would be important aspects of the book named.

Möller always carries out the same thoughts in different ways, enriches them with historical facts and proves to be a rhetorically competent author who, on the other hand, reproduces common and long-defunct prejudices.

He identified the cormorant as a main enemy.

The sociable bird eats around half a kilo of fish every day, which motivates Möller to send suggestive messages of the following kind: "In view of such quantities, one can imagine what a nearby colony or larger group of twenty, one hundred or more birds means for the local fish population." First of all once you can imagine how annoying it must be for the angler when a competitor appears for whom the prey is actually essential for survival.

Then it stands out

According to scientific studies, the fact that fish stocks are declining is mostly due to the poor quality of spawning areas, the structure and obstruction of water bodies, inputs of pollutants and improper management of ponds.

Möller, however, believes that humans are interfering in the environment in an amateurish way by placing certain species under protection.

It is a mistake to regard the "return of once displaced wild animals" as "compensation to nature".

A particularly polarizing example of this is the wolf, which kills “several thousand herd animals a year” in our country.

The author brings his sometimes offended, sometimes outraged outburst into less than five pages.

The complicated population-dynamic relationships, without which a serious discussion of the matter is not possible,

In addition, Möller en passant raises the animal-ethical question of the ability of living beings to suffer, without any substantial argument following from it.

He claims that pike "unquestionably have weaker senses, like all fish" compared to "higher organized animals like mammals or birds," although some sharks, for example, can sense blood diluted billions of times.

He asks how it is possible that "reading the flight image of griffins like buzzards, kites and marsh harriers gives us problems, while we care about global warming or biodiversity as a fact" - as if one inevitably has to do with the other.

In short, he did not write a convincing book.

Andreas Möller: "Pike".

A portrait.

Matthes & Seitz Verlag, Berlin 2022. 159 p., ill., hardcover, 20 euros