Apologies for lack of interaction lately but the book I'm reading is really very good.
Anyway, I almost sprayed my whisky at this article. I held it in, this isn't the cheap stuff.
I like fishing. It's one of the dwindling number of pursuits you can still do while smoking at the same time. Fly fishing or ledgering (maggot or worm) for trout, mostly. Never could get the lengths and weights right for float fishing and there's almost no coarse fishing here at all. There was once a pond with pike, which was cheap to fish because the owner wanted the pike fished out so he could stock it with trout. I caught one with a wooden minnow spinner on a wire trace, the only time I've used that rig, and it was, shall we say, a little different from getting a hook out of a trout.
Anyway, I have read about bread balls and such things used in coarse fishing. Apparently, it turns out that modern bread is very bad for fish. It makes them bloated and gives them dodgy guts. If I was a fish, I'd be happy with that, compared to being hooked in the lip, dragged to the bank and then smacked across the head. Feeling a bit bloated doesn't sound so bad in that context.
But there is great concern for the fish. Aside from the comical claim that one fag-end can poison the Atlantic, it seems there is a more pressing concern for the health of the fish. This is what nearly sprayed my screen with a good malt -
This is the view of one fishery that has become the first in the country to outlaw it, insisting anglers cast out only wholemeal or granary bread.
...
Graham said: “There is not much nutritional content in the white bread compared to the brown.
“The fish tend to get lethargic and bloated. The salt and sugar levels in white and brown loaves are similar but in a typical white sliced loaf there is 3.5 grams of protein per slice compared to 5.6 grams in brown bread.”
The whole point of fishing is to catch and kill your dinner. Predators do not discuss dietary requirements with their prey. Also, the nutritional requirements of fish are not subject to the arbitrary rules laid down for humans. There really is nothing to suggest that the 'brown bread good' mantra applies to fish at all. In fact, since white bread has been used in those baits for centuries and brown bread hasn't, isn't it reasonable to suppose that brown bread makes a lousy bait?
So anglers will in future turn up with brown bread 'bait' and white bread sandwiches for 'lunch'.
Maggot sandwiches. Mmmmm.
12 comments:
"The whole point of fishing is to catch and kill your dinner."
Not coarse fishing (especially carp). It's strictly catch and release, hence the scare stories about those dastardly Eastern Europeans forgetting about the 'release' bit.
Some of them were undoubtedly in the 'Express'...
Yes indeed, the anti-hunting brigade has fishermen in its sights for sure.
Perhaps the hunting ban could be overturned if farmers promised to only allow foxes to kill their free-range, natural grain fed chickens...
None of that catch and release business up here Julia, not unless it's voluntary. Folk aren't going to pay £500 a day to fish on the Tay just to put the salmon back. :)
LI, I'm stopping reading you first thing in the morning. Now I've to spend half an hour drying out my coffee splattered keyboard.
Brown bread simply isn't going to work as bait, it has entirely the wrong texture. Maybe as a bit of 'floating crust' but it won't last as long as white and when rolled up onto a hook it will last about two seconds in the water.
I really don't believe it will affect fish at all, what percentage of their diet does bread make up for fucks sake?
Z.
I can tell you for a fact that farmed trout as opposed to wild trout will mistake cigarette filters for fish feed...
Sod the rod and fly all you need is the landing net ;-)
completely off-tropic, but can somebody please tell me whether i'm dreaming, or not?...the conservatives have put taxes up, right?...and now i'm told that the socialists want to reduce taxes to help revitalize the economy, yes? has the country i love and know gone totally stark-raving fucking bonkers? and can someone kindly bang the twin-twats cameron and miliband's heads together to see whether there's any sodding sense in there?
23:05
no, we are quite sane...and thanks to progressively counter-intuitive conservative policies we are well on-course for a full economic recovery...and let me just say this...if any of you jobseekers out there are complaining that we've suspended your benefits because you disobeyed jobcentre instructions and failed to apply for a job for you were not qualified anyway...i tell you...in my opinion and in the opinion of this government: "can't do", won't do. that's not the attitude we're looking for...after all, i'm not qualified to be a prime minister, but that minor little obstacle hasn't stopped me buggering-up the whole damn bloody show, now has it?
Well, voter/daredevil, not a lot to do with fishing, but.........
I agree with you, although I would not put it quite in the same way.
I know from personal experience (but not me personally!) that you are right to point out the harassment of jobless people.
What the likes of Ian Duncan Smith do not understand is that there will ALWAYS be a group of individuals who are not very 'appealing' to an employer for one reason or another. Those individuals are the LEAST LIKELY to be chosen for a job. This is especially true in an area with high unemployment. Is it any wonder that such a person becomes totally disenchanted? And ought it not to be true that to harass such people is terribly cruel?
I think that there is a simple way to deal with this problem, and it is this:
When a person first becomes a 'jobseeker', give that person a reasonably decent 'allowance', say, £100 per week. After, say, 12 months, reduce the allowance to, say, £50 per week - ie. a bare subsistence allowance. Then forget him. Eventually, he will find his own way, or be content. Families have to be considered differently, but, essentially, the principle is the same.
Simple, isn't it?
But no, some arsehole in the Gov comes up with the idea that these people would get a job if they were TRAINED. So they set up organisations AT GREAT EXPENSE to do the training. What training? Training to write a CV, or something. Does that mean that they then get a job? No! Because the same IMPERATIVES of only 10 jobs and 100 applicants still applies - some people are not 'appealing' to employers. Only when there are 110 jobs and only 100 applicants will these people get a job.
But I fear that our MPs's personal experience revolves around their own experiences of the difficulties of getting staff IN THE CAPITAL CITY. But wait! The cost of living is horrendous. How can anyone survive on the minimum wage? Well, immigrant will do so - and so all the indigenous people have to behave like immigrants - live four to a room, get bussed in, deliver to the 'employer' most of one's wage, and hope for a better future. In other words, MPs themselves are relying upon slave labour. How often have we seen even MPs being 'done' for failing to check the status of their 'cleaners'?
There will always be people who, for one reason or another, cannot get a job or are useless. People who cannot concentrate, and make terrible mistakes.
The horror of our political system is that no one seems to think these thoughts. Politicians are not stupid - they simply have the attention span of a gnat - at their level, of course.
01:19
and so all the indigenous people have to behave like immigrants
there's a young professional lady who lives on my street, a neurologist actually, and i believe, from what she has mentioned to me in passing, that she is in fact 'an immigrant' - i notice that she always wiggles her bum when she walks past me. is that the kind of paradigm shift to which you refer?
23:31
i come here today to announce that the number of people seeking work has just risen by one - basically because i just fired my speech-writer, who omitted to insert a "which" on line 6 between the words "for" and "you". so that's one "which" less in conservative central office, hahahah. personally, i blame the education system bequeathed to us by the last labour government.
09:00
oh dear. sychophancy really can lower the tone of an establishment. very sad.
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